The Crossroads
by mon-petit-pois
Summary: "She had nothing left but Eli's orders—so she followed them, knowing but not caring that she was losing herself in the process." Tali is dead and Ziva is grieving, throwing herself into a string of missions in an attempt to cope. But one assignment is not like the others, and what she finds could turn her world upside down. Preseries AU. T/Z.
1. Chapter 1

**July 2004**

It was the small things that drove her mad, in the end.

Her skull felt like it had been bashed in, her stomach so empty as to be concave. Stabbing shards of pain shot through her ribcage with each breath. Everything throbbed. Surely by now every last inch of her body was black and blue or coated in red?

And yet, that was all so easy to deal with. She had been trained for that, and trained excellently.

Rather, it was the constant _drip drip_ somewhere behind her head, like the erratic ticking of some morbid clock counting down to her last breath; the stickiness of the blood that filled her mouth and nose as if to drown her; the tiny bugs that crawled along the damp concrete floor and onto the ruined skin of her feet. It was the way her left eye had swelled shut, eyelashes glued together by the congealed blood that ran in rivulets from the wound on her forehead, the way the biting metal chains locked around her wrists and chafed against her raw skin, the macabre jewelry of their torture. It was the way her throat burned for just one tiny drop of moisture.

_Drip. Drip. Drip._

Those were the real tortures, the things the training had not prepared her for. With each passing moment they brought her closer to the brink of insanity, compounding and building off of one another until she began to wonder if this was what it meant to break.

But this was her punishment, after all. The price to pay.

A life for a life.

It was poetic enough—almost romantic, even—that for a second she selfishly mourned that he would never know. She would die and he would continue his life, without ever knowing her sacrifice.

And perhaps that was the way it was meant to be. It was better for him this way, she knew. _He will continue his life._

She knew she was going mad, then, when she looked up to find four people standing against the musty brick wall. They shimmered in the faint light that seeped in from the hallway, the dust in the air floating undisturbed around them. They were still as statues, four pairs of accusing, disappointed eyes fixed on her.

Her mother, her sister, her father, and Tony, lined up in front of her like a firing squad.

It was a fitting end, she thought, as she laid her throbbing head back against the wall, face to the ceiling.

"I am sorry."

The words, the first spoken in a week of torture, were barely audible as they fell brokenly from her sticky, blood red lips. She did not know specifically what she was apologizing for—there were so many apologies to be made to so many different people. But she did not have the energy, and the _drip, drip_ continued to count down the seconds. She could hear her heart beating irregularly in her ears, could feel the weight of their accusing stares.

_I am sorry,_ she mouthed a last time, wishing she could deliver her final message in person.

Her one good eye slid shut and she floated.

**Three months earlier**

She fidgeted on the cushion, tugging at the coarse black fabric of her dress. She hated the damn thing, but whether that was due to the itchy material or the emotions weaved into it with every use was up for debate. She kept it in the back of the closet in her room at her father's house, and it was only ever pulled out on occasions such as this.

All around her people were dabbing their red eyes, whispering phrases like _she was so young_ and _such a tragedy._ But somehow, Ziva's eyes were drier than bone as they stared emptily across the coffee table. Speculation flew around that day in whispers they thought she could not hear—perhaps all the tears that she had were cried out the nights before, when she fell asleep shaking on a soaked pillow; perhaps the reality hadn't truly sunk in yet, even though the coffin had already been lowered into the ground days ago; or perhaps she was simply heartless.

None of that mattered, though. What mattered was the aching pit in her stomach and the adrenaline that she had woken up with coursing through her veins—the nearly irrepressible need to _run, run, run_ until she couldn't feel this stabbing pain anymore. She wanted for forget—she _needed_ to leave. She needed to fight.

She needed to kill someone.

The couch beneath her shifted slightly and she looked up to find her mother's concerned and watery eyes studying her. Every time Ziva has seen her in the last few days she has been slightly surprised to see how the years have treated the woman. The years when they all lived together as a family seemed like a distant memory. It was hard for her to remember what life was like before her mother left her father, before Ari left for Edinburgh, before she herself left for the IDF. Ziva had hardly seen her mother in the three years since she had joined the army and later Mossad, and since then much had changed. Rivka's dark brown hair had streaks of gray, and her normally youthful face seemed to have more wrinkles every time Ziva saw her. With the loss of her daughter they had only become more pronounced.

The two mourning women sat in silence for a few moments. Ziva knew she was also very different from the daughter Rivka no doubt remembered. She had been baptized in fire, seen and done things her mother probably could not imagine.

There was a lot more than Talia's death between them.

It was Ziva who made the first move, pulling a manila file off of the table in front of them. She barely looked at her mother as she handed it to her.

Only a few precious seconds passed before the silence was shattered. Rivka's eyes were wide as she looked from the paper to her daughter. "Ziva, you cannot _seriously_—"

"I am leaving," Ziva interrupted, her fiery stare holding steady with her mother's disbelieving one. "Tomorrow."

Disbelief quickly morphed into anger. "How dare he?! He knows that you are hurting! You need to be here with your family and mourn your sister!"

Ziva frowned dangerously, knowing but not caring that they were making a scene in the middle of the shiva. "Do not pretend to know what I _need._ I asked for the mission! I asked for these orders, and I am leaving _tomorrow_ whether you like it or not."

"I know my daughter, Ziva," Rivka shot back, furious. "And I know that the _last_ thing you need is to be sent out on some mission where you'll be directly in the line of fire! Why do you not let yourself grieve for her?"

"I _am_ grieving!" Ziva yelled, standing up from the couch with her fists clenched at her sides. Rivka laughed sardonically, shaking her head.

"He's made you just like him, hasn't he?"

The sudden shift in tone of the conversation threw Ziva for a loop. Bold-faced anger she could deal with, but she had little experience with soft, thinly veiled accusations.

Her eyebrows shot upwards. "Excuse me?"

"I was afraid Eli would do this. Look around, do you see him? Do you see him sitting shiva for his youngest daughter?" Rivka scoffs. "No. No, your father is at _work, _orchestrating deaths and fiddling with his master plan."

Ziva's eyes narrow, and in her peripheral vision she notices that the other mourners have filed out. "What exactly are you accusing me of?" Rivka stands up to be at eye level with her daughter.

"The Ziva I knew, the Ziva I _raised,_ would have stayed here and sat shiva and cried with her mother. But you?" Her mother shakes her head sadly. "You are doing what he does! Throwing yourself into the _work,_ into fighting and shooting and killing! Funneling your emotions until all there is left is an empty shell that knows nothing but war and bullets and death!"

Every word seemed to add another brick to the heavy weight settling on Ziva's chest. "How dare you?" she hissed, breathing heavily. "I just lost my _sister!_"

"And I just lost my daughter!" Rivka fired back. "But I am not running off to vent my pain through the slaughter of others!"

The air in Ziva's lungs flew out with a _whoosh._ Her words began low but quickly increased in volume. "_Slaughter_? That is what you think I do?_ That_ is what you think of me?" She jabbed her finger accusingly in her mother's direction. "You do not have any _clue_ what I do, what_ I _have faced!"

"You forget who I was married to," Rivka retorted. "I can hazard a fair guess."

"I do not kill because I _enjoy it,_ Momma!" Her eyes were wide and wild, but under the layers of anger there was deep hurt. "I kill to protect my country, my _family!_ I am not _slaughtering_ innocent people like some kind of… some kind of _monster!_ The people I take out are guilty, they are _threats!_"

Over the pounding in her head she managed to make out her mother's soft words: "Is that what he has you believe?"

Ziva ground her teeth, snatching the folder out of her mother's shaking hands. "I do not have to stand here and take this. Goodbye, Momma."

And then she turned on her heels and left, the slamming of the door unable to mask the sound of her mother desperately shouting her name.

.:.

It was only a week later that she took her knife and slit a man's throat. With adrenaline pumping through her veins, the blood of the man who orchestrated her sister's death coating her hands, she had never felt more alive.

She left him limp and gargling on the bed and headed to the hotel room's sink, turning on the faucet and watching mesmerized as the crimson-colored water swirled down the drain.

_For you, Tali._

.:.

Once was not enough, as she found out very quickly. She felt an incredible reprieve from pain when she watched her sister's killer's life drain away onto her hands, and she wanted to feel that again.

Luckily for her, Hamas was a large organization with plenty of people that could be considered responsible for the attack. Her father was all too willing to search them out for her, and every new manila folder brought with it the promise of relief from the sickening ache in her chest, even if that relief was only momentary.

She was like an addict, and vengeance was her drug. More and more blood spilt, and with each droplet the words:

_For you, Tali._

But every time she stood and washed the red from her hands, she would see herself in the bathroom mirror, and every time she heard from somewhere in the back of her mind a little voice.

_I never wanted this._

.:.

With each mission the mark became less and less to do with the bomb that killed Tali. She noticed, of course, but logically there were only so many people who were really to blame. Gradually, they became less about vengeance and more about the escape. The pain was never going to go away, no matter how many throats she slit in her sister's name.

She had nothing left but Eli's orders—so she followed them, knowing but not caring that she was losing herself in the process.

_I never wanted this._

.:.

She lost count of how many missions there had been by the time she boarded the plane to America. Her calendar told her it had been over two months since the funeral, so what did that make this one? The tenth? Eleventh?

The engines rumbled to life and she opened the profile on her lap, reading the name at the top.

_Anthony DiNozzo, Jr._

_A/N: I need to stop beginning stories when I already have tons of others in progress. I also need to stop beginning stories when I have a ridiculous amount of homework to do…but c'est ma vie. That's French for something._

_Lots of credit goes to Kiera (Tapes and records) for helping me brainstorm this up. Also to Nicole (mcgeekle) for being such a wonderful person to bounce ideas off of. I appreciate it a lot. This little monster of a fic was born out of me beginning to watch Supernatural and it's probably more influenced by that show than by NCIS (with the exception of the characters and of course the fact that this is 100% paranormal free) so if you watch it then you will understand the true meaning of the title._

_The next chapters will be longer. Hope you enjoyed! Please let me know what you think._

_-Allison_


	2. Chapter 2

Ziva heaved a sigh and tossed the binoculars onto the passenger seat, rubbing at her tired eyes. She had been at this for hours but since he got home from work, her mark had yet to leave his house. From what she had read in the dossier that sat on her lap, she had gathered that he was not the type to spend his nights home alone watching movies, but she had been tailing him for two days now and he had yet to go anywhere but work, the gym, the grocery store, and the coffee shop. This was the part of the missions she detested. It involved a disproportionate amount of waiting around, and she had never been very good at biding time. The action was what she lived for, what she craved.

When midnight rolled around she gave up, pulling the cap off a pen with her teeth and writing _Wednesday night: stayed home_ on her notepad on which she had been keeping track of his schedule. In one fell movement, both the notepad and dossier joined the binoculars on the seat next to her. She started the engine.

Tomorrow would be the day, she decided, as Anthony DiNozzo's apartment was swallowed up by darkness in her rearview mirror. While she always preferred picking her marks off from clubs or bars—it was easier to lure them, especially the ones more prone to one night stands, into the usual trap in such an environment—if necessary she could settle for something else. A gym, it seemed, was her best bet this time around. She would not have the usual advantage of a tiny cocktail dress, fuck-me heels, and seductive eye makeup, but she figured she was good enough by now to throw away the crutches.

With a few well-timed winks and the occasional sway of her hips, she knew Agent DiNozzo would be putty in her hands.

.:.

His car pulled up into the gym parking lot at seven thirty, the same as the last three days. She wanted to roll her eyes at the predictability. Hadn't anyone ever taught this man to never keep a set schedule? This would be far too easy, she noted, wondering idly when her father would start considering her capable of more difficult, important jobs. For now, she lamented, she would be stuck taking care of what she could only assume were low-level targets.

She was not entirely sure of her father's logic in this particular mission, but she was certainly not one to question him. Her bloodlust ran thick and orders were just that—orders.

She waited a few minutes after she saw him enter before she got out of the car, shivering as she slammed the door. For July in Washington, DC, the evening was strangely chilly.

The gym, however, was warm, the air thick with the sickly smell of sweat. It housed a fair amount of workout machines, punching bags, and a weightlifting station. In the center of it all was a sparring ring. It was familiar, she noted. She had certainly spent her fair share of time training in places like this. Luckily for her, that meant she was not operating far from her comfort zone.

She spotted him coming out of the locker room at the far corner of the gym and settling himself in front of a punching bag. He pulled on a pair of gloves and began pummeling it with determination, an intense focus that Ziva found admirable.

She found herself a treadmill and waited for an opportunity.

That opportunity came when her mark made his way over to the sparring ring. She grinned as he ducked under the ropes and challenged the man inside. Before she knew it, her feet had carried her to the center of the gym. She watched, head cocked to the side, as Agent DiNozzo took on a man that had to have at least a hundred pounds on him. The guy had skills, she had to give him that.

She found herself almost unconsciously picking him apart, searching for his weak and strong points. It was entirely possible that she would need this information, she knew.

He was good, but she was better.

After about ten minutes the two broke up and the mark turned and headed her way. With a start, she realized it was his water bottle at her feet. Recognizing an opportunity, she seized it.

"Your right hook is good," she began, handing him the water, "but you need to put more of your body into it." She slipped quickly and easily into this skin, the seductive smile painting her face with little effort. The gaze she fixed him with was one that she found usually drew men in. From the grin on his face and the way he raised his eyebrow back at her, she guessed that this was no exception.

"Is that so?" he responded, taking the bottle and not moving his eyes from hers as he drank.

She cocked her head to the side. "Would you like me to show you how it should be done?" Her voice dripped with measured, teasing seduction and she laid her accent on thick. She really was pulling out all the stops here. Four days was a long time for a single mission.

His eyes darkened, and he played along. She could feel the air between them thickening. "Are you asking to spar with me, Miss…?"

She smirked. "Ziva. And yes, it appears I am."

"I wouldn't want to hurt you," he responded. Her eyes sparkle mischievously.

"It appears we have a chauvinist on our hands, hmm?" She drew out the last syllable before ducking under the ropes between them. When she stood up they were inches away. She looked up at him and patted his cheek lightly, standing on her tiptoes and breathing in his ear, "It is not my wellbeing you should be concerned for."

When she pulled away, he was dazed. For a moment she allowed herself to revel in the power she possessed, that with a few words and a sultry stare she already had him in her grasp. She could feel her heart beating, pumping red blood saturated with adrenaline to her fingers, toes, flushed cheeks. She wondered idly what it said about her that she got such a rush from using her body to bend others to her will.

It probably said more that she got a greater rush from killing, but never mind that. She pushed away such musings easily—if she thought too much about it, it all fell apart. Hawk-like focus was necessary, _always_ necessary, on missions such as this. There was no room for such pointless thoughts in a life dominated by orders, blood, and orders again.

What mattered here was his breath hot on her forehead and the sweat beading in droplets at the back of her neck. The world around her narrowed to only him, his hungry green eyes looking at her with an intensity far better suited for the bedroom than a public gym. Their bodies are inches away and she can physically _feel_ something in the space between pulling them together.

"Fight or get a room!" the man that Agent DiNozzo had just finished sparring with called from the sideline. The words jolted her to reality and she shook her head. She had allowed herself to get much too carried away far too soon.

"She started it," her mark accused, taking a few steps back and flexing his hand. "Now, _Ziva_…" he stretched out the vowels with a twinkle in his eye, "…I believe you challenged me?"

"I did," she nodded, pulling on a set of gloves, "but do not worry, I will go easy on you."

In a silent communication they commenced their dance at the same time, circling each other slowly, predatorily. It appeared almost feline in nature as they moved in tandem, each waiting for the other to strike first.

And go easy on him, she did. After all, she knew men, understood what made them tick. She could not beat him too badly—after a certain point, being beaten by women stopped presenting a mysterious, alluring challenge and became simply a turnoff. Emasculating her mark, as much as she might want to, would serve no utilitarian purpose in the completion of her mission.

It was he who struck first and she had to bite back an amused smile. Silently, she added the word _impatient_ to the growing mental list she kept of his characteristics—she was always thorough when it came to knowing her enemy. He came at her with an easily anticipated right hook, the very one she had been critiquing. She sidestepped it with little issue and came back in a single motion with a blow to his side that was little more than a love-tap. His eyes darkened. He'd learned his lesson—he waited for her to make the first move this time.

She feigned to the right and instead swung at him with her left. Reflexively, his forearm came up to block the blow. He caught her next fist and went to reciprocate the strike, but in the time it took him to blink she had deflected his arm, pinned it behind his back, and used her leverage to push his shoulders downward and bring her leg up to knee him in the gut. He let out an _oofh _and remained doubled over even as she took a step back.

"Ready to give up yet?" she teased, a sultry smirk painting her face.

"Not quite," he ground out, shooting up to land a quick uppercut on the underside of her jaw. She managed to block the blow but it threw her off balance—she had underestimated him, it appeared. It dislodged her center of gravity just enough that when he used his leg to sweep her legs out from under her, she landed with a _thud_ on the mat. It was not long before she had jumped back to her feet and soon they were circling each other once again.

He came at her from the left side this time and she caught his fist easily, twisting his arm in a way that caused him visible discomfort. In a move that was reminiscent of what he had just pulled on her, she used her position to unbalance him, and with a slight tap to the sensitive tendon in the back of the knee, his legs buckled. She twisted his arm behind his back, effectively pinning him face down on the mat. Straddling him, she leaned down with a broad, smug smile on her face and whispered from behind him:

"Time for you to yell _grandpa,_ yes?" Between her legs she could feel him panting. Even with the layers of clothing between them, his skin was hot against hers.

"It's _uncle_," he forced out, breathless. "And you can get off me now."

"It is rare that a man asks that of me," she mused, tapping his arm teasingly and standing.

"She got you good, man," her mark's former sparring partner piped up from the sidelines.

DiNozzo raised his hands in surrender as he pulled himself back to his feet. "Hey, she _is_ good. I'll give her that." He tugged the gloves off and headed over to his water bottle, taking a long sip before looking back at Ziva who was standing on the opposite side of the ring, arms folded loosely across her chest. "Where'd you learn to fight like that, anyhow?"

She cocked her head to the side, pushing a wild strand of hair behind her ear. "My father taught me."

"Some father you've got," he retorted with a raised eyebrow. The corner of her mouth pulled up in a somewhat sardonic smile.

"Tell me about it," she scoffed.

"So, what's your aim here, Ziva?" he inquired, bending over to shove a towel back into his duffel bag. She feels something strange stir in her stomach at the way he _insists_ on saying her name; drawing out the vowels, lingering on the last syllable as if its pronunciation is something to be relished… She swallows and forces herself to keep her mind on the task at hand—complete and utter seduction.

"My aim?"

"Yeah. I mean did you just wake up this morning in the mood to make some poor bastard look like a complete idiot?"

She shrugged, sauntering slowly over to him. "Something like that. Bad day, needed some stress relief, I suppose." Once again, she soon found herself inches away from him in an obvious encroachment on personal space. She smirked and ran her index finger down the center of his chest. "And I would not say you looked like a _complete_ idiot…" She looked up from his chest and their eyes met. She could feel the slight shudder that ran through him from the electricity of it all.

And then she pulled away—after all, she knew how to leave him wanting more.

However she could tell that, although she had him hooked, he would not be inviting her to his bed tonight. Perhaps he was more of a respectable man than she had originally judged him to be, but she knew she would be better off leaving him to dwell on this. She would let his desire and curiosity fester overnight, setting up the stage for tomorrow when she could complete the final stage of the mission.

And then she could move on to the next mission, next city, next mark… After all, as long as she kept moving she stood a chance in outrunning her grief, her regret, and the debilitating pain of loss.

Move, move, move. Run, run, run.

Kill, kill, kill.

Again that little voice in the back of her head popped up: _it is not only your marks that you are killing, Ziva. _

She shook the words away and returned to the present. "I appreciate the stress relief, but I must get going now…" she trailed off and cocked her head to the side. "I do not think I ever got your name."

He extended his hand to shake. It was almost comical—a moment ago she had been straddled atop him and _now_ they exchanged formal, measured pleasantries. "Anthony DiNozzo," he introduced himself as she shook his hand. "But you can call me Tony."

She raised an eyebrow. "Well,_ Tony,_ it has been… what is it you say? It has been real, yes?"

"Yeah," he responded with a grin. She simply nodded and turned, ducking under the ropes and heading toward the door.

"Wait, Ziva?" he called. She halted in her tracks but did not turn around. "Will I see you again?"

Her mouth tugs upward into a smile as she called back to him over her shoulder. "Tomorrow, same time."

With her hips swaying she sauntered out of the door, feeling his red hot gaze on her back the whole way.

.:.

Returning to the apartment Mossad had rented for her, she found herself completely exhausted. She showered and got ready for bed on autopilot. Usually she had a small crash after adrenaline rushes like the one she experienced today, but this was no small crash. One of this proportion was typical after she had come down from the high of finishing the mission, not merely from the baiting stage. There was something different here; she could feel it in her weary bones.

She collapsed onto the bed and for a few moments stared with sleepy eyes at the dark ceiling. Her head, cradled comfortably in a downy pillow, was swimming with thoughts that she tried her very best to shove back where they came from. Most complied easily, so used to being pushed away that they put up little resistance anymore. But there was one, something new, that lingered, unwilling to flee no matter how hard she tried to drive it away.

As she drifted to sleep, Tony DiNozzo's sultry smile still swam stubbornly behind her eyelids.

* * *

_A/N: I really should apologize for how long it took me to get around to updating this. I'm really hoping it doesn't take so long next time!_

_My eternal thanks to **Kiera, EowynGoldberry, amaia, bunnykoko, Tatiana, prince-bishop, Roxy, Chrissy1991,** and a **guest** for the wonderful, supportive reviews! They are what keep me going. That, and the fact that **Kiera** and **Nicole** are willing to let me ramble and help me figure out just what I'm doing with this and other fics._

_Please let me know what you thought of this!_

_Allison_


	3. Chapter 3

His head swiveled around the second he heard the door open, a grin painting his face when he saw it was her.

"I wasn't sure if you were coming," he said as they made their way toward each other.

"I got caught up in traffic," she excused, and then gave him a knowing smile. "Do not worry, Anthony, I keep my promises."

"You can just call me Tony." He bent down to pull on the red sparring gloves, tossing a pair to her. She caught them deftly, without taking her eyes from his.

"Are you sure you want to do this again, _Tony?_" She teasingly dragged his name out, rolling it around her tongue as he had with hers yesterday. His eyes darkened in response and she made a mental note to do that more often.

"Do what?" he asked, ducking under the ropes and into the ring. She followed close behind him.

"Get your ass kicked."

He barked a laugh, bristling his shoulders. "How do you know I wasn't taking it easy on you yesterday, sweetcheeks?"

She cocked an eyebrow dangerously, taking a step forward to bring her once again into his personal space. It had been twenty-four hours since they were in this position but oh, did it feel like they'd never left…

"First: I do not appreciate being called that, and second: how is it that you know it was not _me_ that was taking it easy on _you_?" She smirked and tapped his cheek teasingly before taking a few steps backward.

"Oh you were, now, were you?" he retorted incredulously.

"I would not want to have bruised your fragile manly ego."

"I think it's already been bruised enough, actually," he joked. "You know, you said you were gonna show me how to throw a better right hook, but you never did."

"You are right, I did not," she frowned. "Well then, remind me what I am working with here." She held her gloved hands in front of her face and nodded to him.

She did not even flinch when he took a breath and swung at her, colliding his knuckles with her palm.

"I see the problem here," she clucked, tugging off her right glove and circling around behind him. "You are too tense." He stiffened when she wrapped her hand around his right bicep, squeezing gently. "You need to relax, you are thinking too much. Take a deep breath."

"It would help if you were not…." he paused as her exhale tickled the back of his neck, "all up against me like this."

"Are you having trouble controlling yourself? Would you like me to stop, Tony?" A slight, involuntary shudder ran through him at her words.

"God, no."

"Then _relax._ You cannot be so stiff. This is all about momentum, not raw strength. Be loose, and when you strike put your _whole_ body into it, got it?" She tapped the side of his neck gently and pulled back, circling back around to face him. "Try again."

The irony did not escape her that she was training a man that if all went as planned she would be killing tonight. The thought made her stomach twist in a way she refused to acknowledge. She shoved the thoughts away, narrowing her focus to the task at hand.

He was improving, she noted as he took his second swing of the night. With a few more words of advice (that went along oh so conveniently with teasing, lingering touches) his form improved as well.

"Good," she praised.

"Can you teach me how to do that thing you did last night?"

Her brow furrowed. "What thing?"

"You know, the move with the arm and the back of my leg…"

She smirked. "Oh, yes. _That_ thing…"

Her mark was a very quick learner, she discovered. He could pick up most things through observation alone. On more than one occasion that night he succeeded in dropping her to the floor, something that he relished in enough to amuse her. As he slammed her to her back for the third time that night, however, Ziva decided she'd had enough. In one swift movement, she kicked his legs out from under him and brought him crashing to the ground next to her, their legs intertwined.

Grinning, she rolled on top of him, straddling his waist and pinning his arms to his sides.

"Very funny," he panted. "I'm having déjà-vu."

"You did not object too much to this last night," she reminded him, letting her eyes wander slowly from his face, down his neck, his toned chest…

"No, I didn't," he admitted, and her gaze traces its way back up his body, entangling itself in his disheveled, sandy hair. "But I'm not really in the habit of saying no when beautiful, exotic women want to pin me down."

Again his words threw her stomach into twists. _Beautiful_. She had been called that more times than she could count, but somehow this felt different. She swallowed past it.

"Even when those women have just kicked your ass?"

He gave a throaty chuckle. "_Especially_ then." For a moment there was heated silence, then, "Would you want to get a cup of coffee sometime, Ziva?"

And _that,_ of all things, was what threw her for a loop. Straddling the waist of one Agent "Sex Machine" DiNozzo, their bodies slick with perspiration and lust, the last thing she would expect him to do is ask her out for coffee. She had done this many times, but this was a new one.

She recovered quickly. "I would have thought you would shoot for something more… immediate… than a coffee date."

"Meaning you're wondering why I didn't offer to take you home and ravish you all night long?" There was a playful glint in his eyes.

She shrugged, considering it for a minute. "That is one way of putting it."

"Ziva, if I'd asked like that you would have punched me in the gut. I'd rather not piss you off when you're on top of me, thanks."

She smiled mischievously, placing a hand on his chest. "Then maybe you ought to ask nicely, hmm?"

"Oh yeah, because there's a _polite_ way to ask that?" He rolled his eyes, then after a moment of thinking he frowned. "Are you disappointed?"

"That you did not offer to _ravish_ me?" she asked, cocking her eyebrow incredulously.

He grinned broadly. "You sound pretty disappointed to me."

Truth be told, she _was_ disappointed. Her orders explicitly stated that she was to kill him in his own home, and this took her a step farther from realizing her goal. Coffee meant the prolonging of a mission that had taken far too long already. Coffee meant he was looking for something with her that was more than simply the one-night-stands her assassinations were built off of.

Coffee meant getting to know this man before she slits his throat, and she may be hardened and professional but she is _not_ soulless. This could put her entire mission in jeopardy.

But what choice did she have?

"I am not disappointed," she lied, "just surprised." With that she slid off of him and helped him to his feet.

"Well, I have to work tomorrow," he explained. "My boss wants me in early."

"On a Saturday?"

He heaved a sigh, heading over to his bag to grab his towel and water bottle. "Yeah, it kinda sucks."

"Well, then," she began as he took a sip of water, "maybe I can meet you for _coffee_ during your lunch break? Cheer you up a bit?"

The mark grinned broadly in response. "That'd be great." He bent down and pulled his cell phone from the bag. "Put your number in and I'll let you know when it looks like I'll be off."

She pulled open his contacts and punched in the number of the cell phone that was part of her cover, saving it under _Ziva._ She flipped it shut and handed it back to him with a smile that was not so hard to fake.

"I will see you tomorrow then, Tony."

He smiled broadly in response. "I look forward to it."

.:.

It was drizzling slightly as she pulled up to the local coffee shop. A quick glance at her phone as she stepped outside assured her that she was indeed in the right place. Through the glass storefront she could see her mark standing in line at the counter, fingers tapping lightly against his pant leg.

From the side she almost didn't recognize him. His business suit made him look like an entirely different person than the gym shorts and muscle shirt she had previously seen him in, and she had to admit that while it was not as form-fitting, it was in no way less attractive.

She pushed open the door, inhaling deeply as the rich scent of freshly-brewed coffee hit her in waves—she still appreciated it, even if she was more of a tea person. He did not turn around as a little bell tinkled overhead; instead he stepped up to order his drink. She snuck up stealthily behind him.

"I'll have a medium dark roast, three creams, three sugars please," he told the barista, pulling his credit card from his wallet.

"I never pegged you for the _three sugars_ type, To-ny," she teased from behind him, letting each syllable of his name curl slowly off her tongue. He jumped.

"_Jesus,_ Ziva!" he cursed as she moved up next to him. "Freaking ninja."

She smirked, waving him off and turning to the barista. "Do you sell tea?"

"Yes ma'am."

She bristled at the address and ordered a cup of jasmine tea before turning back to Tony. "I am sorry, I did not mean to frighten you," she said as she patted his chest, her lips curled up into a mocking pout. He just grimaced and handed the barista his credit card.

"Why don't you go save us a table before you give me another heart attack, okay?"

She chuckled lowly and navigated her way to a round table for two against the glass storefront. Pulling out a chair, she sat down and stared out the window at the busy lunch-hour DC street that was distorted slightly by the hundreds of tiny raindrops that slid down the pane. Crossing her legs she fidgeted in the wooden chair, suddenly strangely conscious of her appearance. She'd packed very little, only the practical clothes she had been wearing to the gym and one tiny cocktail dress. It had been black, low cut, and had slits up the side that revealed much more skin than was appropriate anywhere outside a heated nightclub.

The plain, casual navy dress she wore now was something she'd had to go out and buy yesterday for just this occasion. She had felt incredibly awkward doing so, and the entire time she perused the racks she'd had the mantra _it's for the mission, it's for the mission_ playing on repeat in her head.

She took a deep breath and ran her hand through her wild, loose curls as he made his way over.

"Jasmine tea for the lady," he narrated, setting the porcelain cup down in front of her and sliding into the empty chair. He took a sip of his coffee.

"Thank you." For once she settled on a polite remark instead of a witty comeback. She took a sip of the hot liquid. It burned her throat but tasted like comfort. She'd needed this to calm her nerves, she realized. The fact that she even _had_ nerves was extremely unsettling.

"No problem. Is the tea okay?"

"It is not the same as how my mother brews it, but it is still very good." That part was no lie and her chest tightened as the image of her mother's furious, hurt face floated before her.

"So, Ziva," he began, setting down his coffee cup, "where are you from?"

"Is my accent that obvious?"

He shrugged. "Not entirely, but like I said last night, you seem… exotic."

She quirked an eyebrow. "_Exotic?"_

"Yeah, like… Salma Hayek. Penelope Cruz. Ya know. _Exotic._"

"Well, you are getting warmer. Although I am not sure I would consider Chileexotic."

"_Ah, entonces eres de Chile_?" he asked, rolling his r's and stretching his vowels in a way that impressed even her. She chuckled.

"_Sí_, I am," she answered, rolling her eyes a little. "And you, apparently, speak Spanish."

"I remember a few things from college," he shrugged. "And when I was little we had a Venezuelan housekeeper. She gave me candy when I learned new words." A small, nostalgic smile tugged at the corners of his mouth and her eyes shifted away from the unwelcome reminder that this man was, indeed, a person with memories and loved ones and a past (and if not for her, also a future). Again came that awful feeling in her gut that even the hottest, richest sip of jasmine tea couldn't cure.

When she did not reply he continued. "You have a very unusual accent then, Ziva. I've heard a lot of South American accents but yours is… different."

Inwardly she cursed, annoyed that she stilled continued to underestimate this man. "My mother is Jewish. I grew up speaking Hebrew around the house," she explained. "And I also learned French in school. My accents are all over the place."

"Well, well, well, it seems we've got a polyglot on our hands."

She shrugged. "I like languages."

"Do you think you want to do something with languages? Like a translator or something?"

She was suddenly grateful that she had chosen to actually come up with a comprehensive cover story this time—usually it was not necessary as the marks showed little interest in anything but her body. "I am in International Studies, actually. It is why I am in DC; I have an internship here with the State Department."

He raised an eyebrow, sipping his coffee pensively. "So she's kickass _and_ smart? Oh, DiNozzo, what have you gotten yourself into?" he teased. She frowned inwardly at the notion that they were _into_ anything together.

There was a foreign heat threatening to color her cheeks red. A change in topic was in order. "What about you? What do you do?"

Boy, she realized, this man could talk. He had no shortage of anecdotes and movie references to answer her questions about him. She tried, however, to keep at arm's length from the conversation that developed. She did not need to know the details of this man's life that she would so soon be ending.

The endgame was never far from her mind. _His apartment, his bed, her knife._ It was that simple—so why was it getting more and more complicated by the minute? She wanted this over, dammit, before she got in too deep. She could feel herself sinking further with each second, every tick of the clock on the coffee shop wall making it harder and harder for her to ultimately extricate herself from this situation. The pit in her stomach that made itself known whenever she remembered the orders written in that manila folder should have alone been an indicator that this had already gone too far.

"Ziva?" his voice snapped her back to reality.

"Sorry, what?"

"I asked if you wanted to do this again sometime. Maybe something a little more… formal? There's this great Italian place in Adams Morgan."

"I would love that," she responded, snapping at the opportunity. A formal date had the potential to lead the next night exactly where she wanted to go. If she played her cards right, she could be out of DC in forty-eight hours and put this disaster of a mission behind her.

"Pick you up at seven, then?"

"That sounds great." She pasted on a forced smile, trying to ignore the resurgence of the twist in her gut. Perhaps it was something she ate? "I will text you the address."

He beamed. "Perfect. I have to get back to work now, but it was great seeing you, Ziva."

"You too," she offered. With one last smile over his shoulder, he walked out the door, the little bell ringing overhead as she watched from the window walking to his car.

And then he was gone, leaving her sitting at an empty table in a bustling coffee shop, a half-full cup of cold tea in her hands and tumultuous thoughts on her mind.

* * *

_A/N: I've been experiencing a writer's block of sorts lately… I kid you not, this short chapter took four separate sittings to write. Hopefully it turned out well anyhow!_

_Huge thanks to Kiera, Nicole, and Jessica for endlessly supporting and proofreading and just generally helping me through this as usual. Also a huge thanks to __**athenalarissa, kiera**__ again,__** prince-bishop, eowynGoldberry, VG LittleBear, , **__and __**Tatiana **__for the lovely reviews and support! I truly appreciate every single one. This story is still finding its way and you all help a ton. I'm looking for it to be around 15 chapters, but that's all subject to change at this point._

_(Also, to the guest that asked about my old stories—unfortunately, with the exception of a few shorter fics, I have no intention of completing my old unfinished stories, for various reasons. If you would like to talk about it privately just give me a penname. Thanks.)_

_Allison_


	4. Chapter 4

She fidgeted in front of the mirror, twisting and turning to get a view of the dark green dress that fell just above her knees. Its silky material was cinched by a tie at the waist and cool against her olive skin. The spaghetti straps and plunging neckline left little to the imagination but was still classier than many dresses she was used to wearing. In fact, she'd had to go back to the store for the second time in two days to get something appropriate for tonight's date. As she stared at it now, complete with heels that accentuated the gentle curve of her legs, she knew her mark would be putty in her hands.

The doorbell chimed a few minutes later, signaling his arrival. Her heartbeat picked up its pace slightly, something which unnerved her to no end. She felt like a nervous teenager. Running her fingers through her loose, wild curls one last time, she headed to the door and opened it.

And she'd seen him in a suit the morning before, but _damn_ did he look nice.

His gaze roamed over her form hungrily, taking time to appreciate every aspect of her appearance. An emerald dress reflected in emerald eyes and he smiled.

"Ziva, you look…"

She did not wait for him to finish his stunned sentence. "Thank you. You do not look bad yourself."

He extended his arm, inclining his head toward the elevator down the hall. "Shall we?"

With a nod, she threaded her arm through his and they walked, steps punctuated by the click of stiletto heels against the wooden floor.

.:.

"Wow, this place is…"

"Fancy?" he prompted as he pulled a chair out for her. "Overpriced? _Swanky?_"

Her lips quirked up in a smile as she accepted his chivalry. "Do you take all your dates to such nice restaurants, Tony?"

"Before you get too impressed, I know the owner—an Italian thing I guess. My government-salary pockets don't run _that_ deep. I mean, look at the price on some of these wines."

"It is a good thing you get a discount then, because I was going to insist on the Caymus Cabernet."

He raised an eyebrow. "Good taste in wine, too? Damn. You've got to have _something_ wrong with you."

The snort that followed was nearly involuntary. _If only he knew._

"I have been told that I snore in my sleep. Does that count?"

"Badly? Because I mean this may be a deal breaker," he joked.

"Like a drunken sailor, actually."

They were interrupted briefly when the waiter came to take their drink orders. Tony ordered a bottle of wine for them to share.

"Do you know what you're going to getting to eat?" Tony asked after the waiter had walked away. She ran her painted finger down the edge of the menu.

"I have not had a chance to look. What is good?"

"It's Italian, so everything."

She smirked. "Are you sure you are not biased?"

"Maybe a little. But half of the stuff on here is baked in cheese so you really can't go wrong."

Her eyes sparkled as his words conjured up images from long ago—her sister with her head thrown back in laughter as they dined together on a cobblestone patio. "I had the best cheese ravioli dish in Florence once," she told him distantly.

"You've been to Italy?" He looked genuinely interested.

"I went a few years ago with my family. My sister, she loves…" her stomach twisted, "_loved_ it."

A flicker of concern danced across his face. "Your sister?"

"Her name was Tali," Ziva responded with cloudy eyes. "I lost her almost three months ago."

"I'm so sorry."

And then, right then, she decided none of this made any sense.

The sympathy on his face was genuine. There was something about the downward slope of his eyebrows, the slight part in his lips, the sadness in his eyes, that assured her of this.

Anthony DiNozzo was in no way her typical mark. Those men were killers, supporters of an organization willing to use the deaths of innocents to further its cause. But this man? This man was a gentleman, a charmer, a goofball and walking encyclopedia of movie references. And even though their first meeting involved a physical altercation, there had never been violence in his touch. The desire she knew he felt was manifested not in her being pushed against a wall and having a tongue shoved down her throat but in the way his touch had lingered and eyes had darkened. He'd called her beautiful and asked her to coffee instead of his bed. He'd taken her arm and walked her to his car. No, sitting across from her was not the face of someone who deserved death.

And despite all this, she was still going to have to take her knife and slit his throat. After all, what choice did she have? Her father would not have sent her to do this if it was not justified.

Her stomach roiled. The waiter appeared again and asked for their orders and she had to do her best to pretend that she was not feeling suddenly sick. As she ordered the lasagna she had a feeling she would not be able to eat it.

She just wanted this over with.

.:.

Dinner was delicious as she had been expecting. Upon finishing, her stomach was full and her cheeks were a slight pink color from the wine.

"How long have you been in the States, Ziva?"

"Three weeks."

"You been sightseeing yet?"

"No, not yet. Why do you ask?"

He shrugged as he stood up, grabbing his lapels to fix his suit jacket. "I thought I'd give you a personal tour. Interested?" He held his hand out to her. She quirked an eyebrow at him as she took it and stood up as well.

"That sounds lovely."

"I was thinking National Mall. That's where all the monuments are," he informed her as they made their way out of the restaurant into the cool summer night air. "Are you going to get cold?"

"If I do then I will just have to have you warm me up, won't I?" she teased, shamelessly flirting with him. This needed to end tonight, or she feared she would not be able to work up the guts to end it, period.

The idea of disobeying her father's orders sent shivers down her spine. He noticed and offered her his jacket.

"I am okay," she assured him. He held the passenger door open for her once again and she slid in.

Parking was difficult around the Mall, so they ended up having to walk a little ways to get to the Lincoln Memorial. The night was warm but breezy.

"This is beautiful," she observed as they sat down on one of the memorial's steps and gazed out at the Reflecting Pool.

"Yeah," he agreed, inhaling deeply. "It really is."

When she looked over at him she found he was studying her with curiosity in his gaze.

"What?"

"Nothing. It's just interesting to see what people who aren't from here think of all of this."

She shrugged, the moonlight reflecting off her sleek dress. "Well, I may not understand the exact significance of everything here, but that does not mean I cannot appreciate it."

"I probably couldn't tell you the exact significance either, to be honest. I slept through all my history classes," he admitted. "But hey, doesn't make me a bad American. I still like baseball and apple pie, so I'm good."

She cocked her head to the side. "I have never seen a game of baseball."

His eyes brighten, and she can almost see the light bulb appearing above his head. "A friend of mine works for the Nationals. He gets me tickets all the time. There's a game in a few days, on Wednesday night, would you want to go?"

It sounded fun, fun enough that she initially forgot she wasn't planning on having him live that long. "I would love to." Then, in the next breath: "It is getting chilly out here." She slid over a few inches to press her side up against his, suddenly reminded that she was going to need to step up her game if this were to end tonight.

"Are you ready to head back, then?" he asked. Wondering where he meant by _back_¸ she answered in the affirmative.

Back turned out to be "back to her apartment," she noted with no slight bit of exasperation. It has now been a week since she first received the orders to kill this man, and it had only gone downhill from there. She felt like she was sliding downward at a breakneck pace—unless she did something soon, this was not going to end well.

He parked against the curb and got out with her, insisting on walking her back up to her apartment. Her stomach tossed and turned the entire elevator ride. Soon there was a ding and they stepped out, walking back down the hallway to her door. She inserted the key and turned back to him to say goodnight.

"I had a nice time," she told him, and it was only partially a lie. If she were any other person, tonight would have been perfect—but instead she was Ziva David, assassin extraordinaire, and tonight was ridden with emotional turmoil and undertones of dread.

"I did too," he agreed, offering her a smile. "I'll see you tomorrow, Ziva," he bid before walking back down the hallway, leaving her standing alone in the threshold.

Once he disappeared into the elevator she slid her eyes shut and leaned back against the wall, taking a deep breath.

"Oh, Tali, what am I supposed to do?"

.:.

The night of the game was drastically different than their previous date. In the place of a calm and quiet restaurant was a stadium packed full of people decked out in red, white, and blue. Yellow buckets overflowed with buttery popcorn, ice cream dripped down cones and chins, and cotton candy stuck to anything and everything. The air itself tasted as if it had been deep-fried. People of all shapes and sizes mulled noisily about in all directions, leaving Tony to take Ziva's hand to ensure she was not lost in the crowd.

They found their section and were finally able to break free of the sea of people.

"This place is chaotic," Ziva observed as they took their seats just in time for the first pitch.

"I prefer spirited," Tony shrugged, popping open their bag of Cracker Jacks and extending it to her. "Want some?"

She eyed it suspiciously. "What is it, exactly?"

"Popcorn on steroids," he answered simply. "Try it." She did, and found it strangely delicious. She also found that the game of baseball itself was a bit more complicated than she'd expected it to be.

"Wait, what is he doing? The ball is not is play, why is he running?"

"He's stealing the base."

Her brow furrowed. "Stealing? Then why does the referee not call a foul?" Tony chuckled in response, taking another handful of popcorn.

"No, you're allowed to steal. And there aren't any referees in baseball, they're called umpires. Also, there's no such thing as a foul. Well, there're foul _balls_ but that's completely different…"

"Why do you Americans insist on making everything so complicated!"

"We don't make _everything_ complicated."

She quirked an eyebrow at him. "Your version of football is an absolute nightmare to understand! And you do not even use your feet!"

"What sports do you play down in Chile, then? I'm sure they aren't complicated at all," he shot back.

"I do not play any sports," she admitted. "I ran track in high school, though."

"Do you still run?"

She shrugged. "Every morning, more or less. Usually about six miles." His eyes bulged at that.

"_Six?"_

"More or less."

"Jeez, Ziva, you're a tank."

She frowned at that. "I do not know why I would be an armored vehicle, Tony. That does not make sense."

"We need to get you a book on American expressions, huh?"

"Tease all you want. I would rather speak four languages and mess up _occasionally_ than speak only one."

"_Oh, I'm Ziva," _he began in a mocking falsetto, "_and I speak four languages and can kick fully grown men's asses."_

Her eye narrowed jokingly. "Oh, shut up." Immediately, the corner of his mouth turned upwards and fixed her with mischievously glinting eyes.

"Make me." His sultry words rolled heavy off his tongue. She simply smirked in response, patting his leg gently.

"All in due time, Anthony. All in due time."

With that she turned back to the game, trying to ignore the fact that she would, sometime soon, meet this demand, but certainly not in the way he intended.

.:.

After the game they flowed out onto the sidewalk with the crowd, hands clasped together once again to stay together. He did not, however, release it once they broke free of the crowd and started walking toward the parking deck. This time she was acutely aware of his calloused, warm skin and the soft pulse she could feel beneath it.

"You know how you were saying you run every morning?" he began.

"Yes."

"Well, I do too. I mean, I try to. And I don't do anywhere near six miles. But would you want to run together sometime? This Saturday morning, maybe? I could drive to your place and we could run to mine, maybe grab breakfast or something?"

She had to admit, he was getting creative. He was not planning on taking her back to his apartment tonight, that much she could tell from his behavior. And it would have angered her if he hadn't offered up this foolproof alternative.

"I would love to."

_His apartment,_ that was the key. True, she would have to wait a few days. But she could bide her time until the weekend, when she could finally put this all behind her. Her gut roiled at the prospect.

And the light at the end of the tunnel was finally visible, but she could hardly bear to look at it.

.:.

From the window in her bedroom she watched the taillights of her mark's car disappear around the corner. For a few moments she stood transfixed, staring blankly into the darkness. Such idleness did, however, foster thoughts about a certain man that she would rather not dwell on, so she turned away and headed to the bathroom to get ready for bed.

Unfortunately she could only distract herself for so long before she had to lie down, alone with her thoughts, and attempt to sleep. Tony came back to her then, his mouth pulled into a kindhearted grin. She snarled into the quiet night and forced him away as she was so accustomed to doing.

That night, it appeared that his absence left a vacuum that her subconscious seemed all too eager to fill. Her father came then, steel eyes narrowed under greying brows.

_You have a duty, Ziva,_ he reminded her sternly, _a duty to your country, to your family. To Tali. You wouldn't happen to be considering doing anything that could jeopardize that, would you?_

_Of course not,_ she rushed to assure him.

He nodded, _Good,_ and then disappeared in a ripple of moonlight. With that she drifted, but not before one final voice, young and innocent, echoed hauntingly in her sleepy head.

_I like him, Ziva. He makes you smile._

* * *

_A/N: Hope you're enjoying it! It's moving along even faster than I'd hoped which is great, because usually I have fic ideas and they end up like All Fall Down- almost two year in progress and 165k..._

_My neverending thanks to **prince-bishop, counttoamillion, licaro, born30, athenalarissa****, Roxy, eowyngoldberry, VG littlebear, .5SOS, thebluedragonwolf, myriddin, **and two** guests** for the fantastic feedback (and Kiera, Nicole, and Jessica as always, for everything). You guys are what keep this going. Please let me know what you think!_

_Allison_


	5. Chapter 5

For the next two days, her sister lingered in the details. Cut off sandwich crusts, a golden star-shaped necklace, the little girl with the curly brown hair at the take-out restaurant—she saw Tali in all of these. And unlike usual, the blood pumping through her veins did not boil and yearn for vengeance. Instead it churned with a kind of mournful lethargy, the result of profound sadness that was sprinkled with occasional flecks of disgust. Her first instinct was to attribute this revulsion to the murder of an innocent child, but a small voice in the back of her head that sounded suspiciously like her mother insisted that it was not the spilling of her sister's blood that was the cause.

No, her disgust was far more reflexive than she was willing to admit.

Ziva had very little to do to kill time before Saturday, so her brain was often left idle. Without a set task at hand, her thoughts would drift into dangerous and uncharted waters. She would find herself thinking about her sister, her mother, her orders, her future—and not just empty musings, either. Often these thoughts would border on critical, analytical examinations of her life and her choices. To a woman whose life was built upon unquestioning execution of orders, there was nothing more risky.

But this mission, more so than any other, bred questions. There were so many of them, hiding unasked in the dark recesses of her mind that she had repeatedly shoved them to. One of these questions, small enough that, if she was distracted, it could slip through to the front of her mind, was abnormally persistent in those idle days.

And that simple, one-word question was where it all began to unravel.

.:.

She woke up early Saturday morning with a pit in her stomach. At first she thought she was hungry, but it became obvious half a sandwich later when it had only gotten worse that the cause might not be entirely physical.

The prepaid burn phone buzzed in her pocket and she took it out to find a text waiting for her.

_Jogging over now. Be there in ten._

She slipped on her running shoes and tugged her hair back into a tight, fierce pony-tail. For a moment she allowed herself to sink on the mattress as she stared blankly at the black object on her bedside table.

She had her orders memorized—get him to let her into his home, then slit his throat and be sure to leave no evidence behind. With not much else to do, she had read them over and over again in the last two weeks. She knew them inside and out, forwards and backwards, but in the end it was only ink on paper. Reading it over and actually carrying out the orders were two very different things.

And when it came time to take that first step—to pick up the knife and put it in the sheath at her waist—she hesitated.

It was, of course, ridiculous. She had had that knife on her for the better part of the two weeks, expecting each time she met with her mark would be the last. However, Tony had proven difficult in more ways than one, and everything was different now that she knew for sure that this encounter would end with his blood coating her hands. When she did reach out to pick up the blade, it was heavier than she remembered.

Her father had given her her first weapon when she was nine years old. In one fell swoop, she had given up ballet and taken up knife-throwing. According to her father, dancing was fine when taken for the principles of dedication it taught. Beyond that he found the practice useless, and once he felt she had learned all she could by way of work ethic he strongly encouraged her to quit in favor of something more useful in the real world. Learning to use a knife had been at the top of the list.

Her mother had been entirely against it, of course. Until Rivka got pregnant, she herself had been a ballerina, and Ziva suspected she saw her eldest daughter following in her footsteps. But Rivka was not naïve—she knew that Eli had very different plans. A month after Eli gave Ziva her first knife, Rivka took her daughters and left. The separation, however, did not last long; the world was not kind to a single mother, and she had trouble supporting herself and her two little girls. After a few months she returned, reluctant and resentful, to Eli.

The training started again, and this time did not stop until Ziva joined the IDF. The young girl had always been complacent with this, eager to please her stern but God-like father. She spent her teenager years with a knife in her hand, or if not in her hand than in a sheath at her ankle or waist. All of those years, all of that training, had made it so that the ultimate sense of security came from clutching a metal blade between her fingers. It always made her feel powerful, safe, and calm.

But now as she weighed it in her palm, it brought nothing but turmoil.

Eager to rid herself of the feeling, she quickly attached the sheath to her waist. As she did so, the doorbell rang. She stood, clenching and unclenching her fists before making her way to the front door of her small apartment.

"Hey," he greeted, smiling broadly. His face shimmered with a thin sheen of sweat and his hear was tousled from running.

"Did you have a nice run over?"

He shrugged. "Lonely. Ready to go?"

Both luckily and unluckily, once they began running neither felt the need to talk. Unfortunately, while it freed her from having to have a conversation with a man she was only an hour away from killing, it also left her alone with her thoughts once again.

She tried to focus her energy on the wind in her hair and on her face, the pavement beneath her feet, and her even breathing as they jogged side by side down the picturesque DC sidewalk. Every now and then she would become hyperaware of him next to her, of the panting breaths he took that, little did he know, were numbered. But for the most part it worked—running had always been her escape method of choice.

She could not run forever, though, and before she knew it they had completed their loop and slowed to a stop in front of his apartment building. Suddenly her heart was in her throat, making it hard to even out her labored breathing. His panting, luckily, matched and masked hers.

"God, I'm out of shape," he mumbled as he typed in the passcode. The front door opened. "Mind if we take the elevator?"

"Not at all," she agreed, but her voice was somewhat distant. Most men she had encountered would not admit to such a thing. They would hold their breath until they were blue in the face or until their lungs collapsed—anything to not show weakness. She tried not to imagine what it said about their quasi-relationship that he was willing to admit that.

The knife felt cold and heavy against her right hip.

As the elevator doors opened, a thought struck her. She had waited almost two weeks for this opportunity. She had gone on three, now four, dates in expectation of this moment here, when he brought her into his apartment. Why? Because the orders said she should kill him in his apartment.

But in reality, she had no real need to wait this long. She could have showed up at his door yesterday, a week ago, or even before they met, and forced her way into his apartment, killing him on the spot. Her father's words from years ago echoed back to her.

_You knock on their door, and when they answer, you shoot them. It is that simple._

She knew his address, and certainly after they met he would have let her in before his brain could process that she really _shouldn't_. She could have struck at any time, but instead she waited. She waited weeks.

And now she had what she'd been waiting for.

They entered through the living room, her right hand twitching just above the sheath. It was a nice place, she noticed. It was clean, almost pristine—she made a conscious effort not to touch anything—and certainly not what she had been expecting from a bachelor in his twenties. The sleek, black baby grand piano that sat in the middle of the room was perhaps the most surprising. She quirked an eyebrow.

"I did not know you played piano."

He shrugged. "My mom forced me to get lessons when I was little. I hated it, but mostly 'cause my teacher was mean. Do you play?"

She shook her head absently, a distant look in her eyes. "Not for a long time." _Not since Tali died._

"Well when I got the piano last year I really meant to start taking lessons again. Maybe you could teach me?"

"I was not very good."

"Neither was I. We can teach each other."

She really regretted bringing this up. All this conversation had done was intensified the ache in her chest. Hearing him talk about his future—_their_ future, even—made her heart hurt and the blade at her waist burn red-hot.

This man had plans for a future, and for some unfathomable reason he wanted her to be a part of it—_h__er,_ the woman who was about to extinguish any future he may have had.

"Do you have a bathroom?" she blurted almost without thinking.

"Yeah, it's through the bedroom doors," he directed, pointing to her right. She nodded, not trusting her voice, and moved on numb legs toward the door. Discreetly, she used her shirt to turn the doorknob and shut the door behind her.

The woman that stared back at her in the mirror was barely more than a girl. With her squared shoulders and her wild hair pulled back into a fierce ponytail, she gave the illusion of confidence—but look closer and all that was visible was fear and doubt. Her brown eyes were murky and unsure, and the longer she looked, the wider they got. Her mouth was set into a thin, straight line as the golden pennant at her chest glinted almost mockingly.

_You must do this, Ziva,_ her father told her, and she could hear it so realistically that, had she not been standing in front of a mirror, she would have believed he had appeared behind her.

She gulped and looked away from the terrified girl in the glass. Careful not to leave fingerprints, she flushed the toilet and ran the sink. She avoided her reflection on the way out.

Her fingers, shaking this time, twitched again to the blade as she stepping into his bedroom.

"Tony?" she called out, resolving to make him come to her. She did not want to go back into his living room, to see his movie collection and his picture frames and that beautiful grand piano that served to represent everything she was about to rob them both of. She did not want to be reminded how base an action she was going to commit.

As he came through the doorway and approached her, her father's voice once again sounded.

_Orders are orders. You must follow them. _

Her fingers were at the hilt of her knife then, as she stared up into his questioning eyes.

"You okay?"

_Follow your orders. Kill this man!_ _Do it!_

And her father was yelling and her heart was pounding and her hands were shaking—and then, on top of it all, Tony DiNozzo was looking at her with such concern that she thought she might throw up.

_Do it! Kill him!_

And suddenly, that one question that she shoved away for so long forced itself to the forefront of her mind. Her hand fell limp at her side and suddenly that question was all there was.

"Why?"

She did not intend to speak it out loud, but it was just as well. Once she spoke it the question was there, hanging in the air, irrevocable.

_Why?_ Why kill this man? What was his crime? What could this caring, charming man possibly have done that warranted his name on a hit list aside Hamas terrorists? She did not have the answer to any of these questions; in fact, she could not even hazard a guess.

"You looked like something was wrong, that's all," he responded. "I'm about to make pancakes, wanna help?"

She nodded absently, barely noticing that she began following him. She was wrapped up entirely in her thoughts. There were so many red flags that she had ignored in the past two weeks, but now it was as if all of a sudden she could see them all. As she turned the corner into the kitchen, a glimmer of light bounced off the piano and into the shape of her mother.

_I am proud of you._

Her heart continued to pound and all around her was red—just not in the way her father intended. No, there would be no blood shed today. The decision was made as soon as she voiced her doubt.

And though at the time she did not know it, it was not just Tony whose fate was sealed that day.

.:.

She spent breakfast in a disjointed haze, something that Tony was not oblivious to.

"You okay? You've been acting kinda distant all morning," he observed.

"I am fine," she assured him emptily, and the look of skepticism he shot her was proof of how unconvincing she sounded. He made such remarks multiple times before giving up. She nodded and appeared to be listening to the increasingly one-sided conversation, but her brain was elsewhere.

He drove her home about an hour later, and much of the ride was spent in heavy silence. As they pulled up in front of her building, he made one last effort.

"You know, tomorrow is the Fourth."

She frowned. "The Fourth what?"

"The Fourth of July. Seriously, you work at the State Department and haven't heard about it?"

"Oh, yes, the Fourth," she responded, pretending to know exactly what he was talking about. "What about it?"

"Well, if you're up for it, they set fireworks off from the Reflecting Pool around nine. We could go and watch them, if you want. There's a ton of people there usually, though. So if you wanted to do something less crowded…. Well, I don't mean to invite myself over, but your apartment balcony would have a really great view."

Her brain was working on overload. It was all she could do to nod. "That sounds… nice."

"I could bring dinner over around eight. Pizza or chinese?"

"It does not matter to me."

"I'll pick something," he answered. "I'll see you then, okay?"

"See you then." Her words were still distant as she got out of the car. She barely remembered the hike up the stairs to her apartment, but as soon as she entered the apartment everything seemed to crash.

She shut the door behind her and leaned back against it, slowly sliding down until she sat with her arms wrapped around her knees. Her eyes burned and chest ached. Her apartment was spacious and bright and yet she had never felt more trapped in her life. Suddenly she felt like a child again, yearning for her mother's embrace that, despite their many differences, never failed to bring her comfort.

But instead, all she got was a cold wooden door against her back and an impossible situation that she could not help but think she had brought on herself.

* * *

_A/N: I'm really happy with how this story is moving along! I'm enjoying writing it. A few notes I've been meaning to make: first, the story is set in Summer of 2004, and I realized a couple weeks ago that there is a flaw in this. Ziva helped Ari with his infiltration of NCIS in Bete Noir, which technically would have already happened. So for the record- in this universe that did not happen. I may move the story to 2003 to avoid possible confusion, if needed. _

_Thanks so much to **Eowyngoldberry, mishka, Roxy, prince-bishop, licaro, athenalarissa, babyvfan, Com2meZT, .5sos, Tatiana, j09tiva, Libby, VG littlebear,** and a **guest** for the fantastic reviews! I really appreciate them- they keep me going. Also billion thanks, as usual, to** Nicole, Kiera, **and **Jessica** for helping me with this story. Please let me know what you think!**  
**_

_Allison_


	6. Chapter 6

The apartment was too small, too claustrophobic, too dark even at midday—so she left.

She tossed the knife and its sheath onto the table, leaving it forgotten as she jogged out the door, down the hallway and two flights of stairs, and out once more onto the quiet side street. She did not look back as her feet pounded one after the other against the pavement, her body a well-oiled machine. This morning's run should have left her exhausted, but instead she was simply numb. The wind blew against her face and through her hair, which now hung loosely around her steely face.

At an intersection she was forced to stop and wait for the signal to cross. Only when she stopped did she realize how out of breath she was. Blood and the sound of passing cars roared in her ears. A man next to her asked for directions, and it was all she could do to force out that she didn't know. He looked at her strangely and moved on to ask someone else.

Again, she took off.

She did not know where she was headed until she was standing once again at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial. The white marble steps loomed in front of her. She and Tony sat not too far from where she was standing now almost a week ago. In reality, nothing about her situation had changed since the night they sat here under the stars.

All the same, it still felt like her world had come unhinged completely from its axis. There she stood, summer sun beating down on her shoulders and the land around her open and bright. Still, she felt as trapped as she had in the apartment.

There really was no way out of this one.

Killing Tony now would be incredibly difficult, if not impossible. She had tried and failed to carry through with the orders. In principle it was not so difficult a thing—she had done it many times before. But to see him, to feel the heat from his body and see the sparkle in his eyes when he looked at her, changed the story completely. Every bone in her body had protested the course of action she'd intended to take. _Innocent, innocent, innocent_, they'd screamed at her. And then there was her mother, whose face she saw in every brown-haired woman milling around the memorial that afternoon. Her words echoed softly in the back of her mind.

_He's made you just like him, hasn't he?_

But worse than her mother was Tali. Ziva's mind was never far from her dead sister, and now whenever she imagined her, the girl was never without an expression of sadness and disapproval. It stung Ziva to her core—after all, Tali was the reason she did any of this.

_I would never have wanted this._

But what choice did she have? To disobey, to go against her father's orders, simply could not be done. The idea of returning to him empty handed sent shivers down her spine. All of her life, her father had treated disobedience as akin to a mortal sin. Mossad was no different, and now the two were essentially one and the same.

Knowing she would find nothing more here, she began running once again. This time, however, she was not numb. Her legs ached, lungs burned, and brain ran on overtime.

Either she obeyed and Tony died, leaving her with a burden of guilt she could possibly never be absolved from, or she disobeyed, Tony lived, and she was left in the hands of a furious man with the power to do with her as he pleases.

But she was his daughter, after all—surely he would have mercy? Over the blood rushing in her ears, she heard her mother's voice again.

_You do not know him like I do, Zivaleh._

.:.

The phone rang early that evening and her blood ran cold.

It was not the burn phone in her pocket but the one lying in the nightstand on top of the manila folder whose documents were tearing her world to shreds. Very few people had that number, and even fewer were likely to be calling her now.

Unless her sister was magically alive or her mother by some miracle had forgiven her, the person on the other line when she picked up would be her father.

Besides Tony, he was the last person she wanted to talk to right now. She did not even know if she was capable of it. This was the man who held her life in his hands. He could ruin her life with the snap of his fingers; and in some ways, he already had.

Her hands shook as she pulled the vibrating phone from the drawer and she could only hope that her voice would not betray her in the same way. With little time to think, she flipped the phone open and brought it to her ears.

"Hello, Abba."

"_Ziva," _he greeted cordially.

She swallowed. "How are you?"

"_I am fine. I am calling for purely business reasons. I assume that you have not forgotten the orders I gave you?"_

"Of course I have not."

"_Then would you care to tell me why Anthony DiNozzo is still alive and_ you_ still in DC?"_ His voice hovered somewhere between annoyance and anger and she knew that she was walking an incredibly thin line.

"There have been some… hiccups in the execution of the mission. It is nothing of concern." A prickling sensation travelled down her spine—she was not used to lying to him.

She could almost hear him raising his eyebrows. "_It has been two weeks, Ziva. Pardon me if I am _concerned._"_

"Give me forty-eight hours, Abba_. _By then it will be over. _" _She put a deadline on it only for his sake. Either way, she knew that by then she would have to have made her decision. She could not drag this out forever.

"_I will not tolerate this kind of sloppiness from you. I sent you because you are reliable and one of the best. Do I need to reevaluate?"_ For once his tone actually sounded like that of a parent.

"No," she promised, then hesitated for a moment. She sat down on the bed, switching the phone to her other ear. "Abba… May I ask who this Agent DiNozzo is?"

"_Who he is?"_

"Yes. What are his crimes? What is it about him that warrants such drastic action? He does not seem like—"

Eli cut her off there. "_Are you questioning your orders?"_ He sounded as if he was on the verge of losing his temper. She jumped quickly to placate him.

"No, no, I would never—"

"_Are you questioning _me?" His tone escalated, and she gulped. Her knuckles turned white around the phone.

"No—"

"_Because if you are,"_ he threatened, "_I guarantee you, Ziva, you will not like the consequences." _He was thousands of miles away, but she swore she could feel his presence there in the room, towering over her menacingly. The whole room seemed to get ten shades darker, as if enveloped in his shadow.

"Please, I meant nothing by it." Her voice shook, almost pleading.

"_Anthony DiNozzo killed an officer of Mossad in cold blood. He is an enemy of the state of Israel and he is to be annihilated. Do you understand me?"_

The fear was so overwhelming that for the moment she did not care about the absurdity of his words. "Yes, Abba."

"_You are loyal to_ me," he demanded, voice low as he just barely was able to contain the fury boiling beneath the surface. "_And you will do your best to remember that_. _Are we clear?"_

He did not wait for her response before hanging up.

She sat there, frozen on the edge of the bed with the beeping phone in her lap, for longer than she would ever care to admit. The line was dead but the fear in her heart definitely wasn't. It spread like a disease, infecting and paralyzing her whole body, fed by every repetition of her father's angry threats that played like a broken record in her brain. She could still feel him looming over her.

She knew what happened to people Eli suspected of disloyalty, and it terrified her.

It was naïve to ever think that he would treat his daughter any differently than any other operative. He had lost any sense of family long ago. The job consumed him, leaving nothing less than a ruthless skeleton of a man in her father's place. His punishment, should she return without the mission completed, would be severe. There was no longer any doubt.

And then, of course, there was Tony.

Her father had answered her question, albeit not in a satisfactory way. The more she thought about it, the more doubtful she became. Anthony DiNozzo was many things—class clown, movie aficionado, womanizer, charmer—but a cold-blooded murderer?

She remembered his easy smile and hopeful eyes and decided that, no, it was not possible for her to be so wrong about a person.

Her father had lied many times before, and it was not so ridiculous that he would do so now. However, he always had seemed to have a good reason for it. It always seemed justifiable. But this… the murder of an innocent man? How was that justifiable?

What was she missing?

She knew, however, that it did not matter in the end. If Tony was, indeed, innocent, her father's actions were not what mattered. It was her actions that made the difference.

And both her and Tony's lives hung in the balance.

.:.

She was standing alone in a dimly-lit hallway lined in red carpeting. It stretched so far that the four walls converged at a single distant point on either side of her. Surrounding her were doors, hundreds of them, all identical and all locked. She tried brass knob after brass knob, but each one seemed to have less give than the last.

She could feel her heartbeat in her neck; it sped up with each door she tried and failed to open. Her movements became more frantic, more desperate, and suddenly even though the hall was infinitely long, she felt as though it was closing in on her. On either side doors were being swallowed by the encroaching black. Hands shaking, she tried turning the knob of the door in front of her once again, and once again it stayed shut. The darkness was squeezing the air out of her lungs as the hallway shrunk around her, and her shaking hands pounded furiously on the wooden door. When it still did not budge she moved to the door directly across from it, pounding and trying to breathe deeply enough to scream for help. The walls pressed closer, suffocating her.

And then by some miracle they slowed and stopped, leaving her alone in a rectangular room with a door on either side. Air entered her lungs once again with a _whoosh._ She shut her eyes and took a deep breath, allowing her muscles to relax.

"Ziva."

She jumped, her eyes snapping open and searching wildly for the speaker. She did not have to look far.

"Momma?"

Her mother stood just in front of her, looking the same as she did when Ziva last saw her at the shiva. She wore a modest, simple black dress, the same color as the torn ribbon pinned to her chest as a symbol of her mourning. Her brown hair hung loosely around her delicate features, her mouth curving into a gentle smile.

"What are you doing here?" Ziva asked with a frown.

"I'm here to show you something." Rivka extended her hand and Ziva, albeit hesitantly, took it.

The door that seconds ago Ziva had been pounding on yielded without complaint to her mother's touch. They stepped through the threshold.

And suddenly, they were somewhere completely different.

"Why are we in Tony's bedroom?"

Rivka whispered, "Just watch."

Moments later the door that connected his room to the living area swung open. In stumbled a couple, arms wrapped around each other as they laughed at some private joke. The man, who Ziva knew to be Tony, silenced his partner with a gentle kiss.

"You're so beautiful," he moaned against her lips, reaching up to stroke the woman's cheek with his knuckles. He tucked a wayward strand of hair behind her ear, hands so steady and gentle it was as if he believed he was holding the most valuable treasure in the world.

But of course, Ziva could expect nothing less from this man. Something stirred in her stomach.

She turned to her mother. "Why are you having me watch this?"

Rivka dismissed the question. "Tell me what you see," she prompted, gesturing back toward the couple pressed against the bedroom wall. Ziva looked in time to see Tony run his lips down the woman's neck.

"I see Tony kissing a woman."

"Is that all?"

"What more do you want?"

"Tell me about him."

"His sexual habits?" Ziva questioned, quirking an eyebrow. "Momma, I think you are a bit old for him. Besides, he and I have never…"

Rivka rolled her eyes at the joke, but otherwise ignored it. "I just meant him in general. But does that bother you, that he never initiated this?"

"I do not know why that would bother me."

"You have been on quite a few dates now, Zivaleh, and not so much as a kiss goodnight."

"My self esteem is not so fragile, Momma," Ziva reminded her.

"That is not what I mean. Think. Out of all of the men you have been with, who of them would ever have respected you enough to let the physical things come second?"

Ziva frowned. "None, I suppose."

"And how many of them were what you would consider good men?"

She swallowed, finally understanding what her mother was getting at.

"Yes, it bothers me," Ziva admitted. "You should see him, Momma. He is… he is so kind. I have never met a man so gentle, so respectful…"

Rivka raised an eyebrow. "Even if he killed a Mossad officer?"

The speed at which Ziva became defensive shocked even herself. "No. He did not, I do not buy that. You of all people should know how Abba lies!"

"I believe you," Rivka promised, holding her hands up in the air.

Ziva glanced back across the room where Tony was carrying the woman to his bed. "Look at him," she muttered, eyebrows sloped outward. "See how he looks at her. Such admiration, it is like… like she is all that matters to him." The last sentence came out dazed.

"He looks at you that way sometimes?"

Ziva gulped, evading the question. "He deserves much better than me."

"That is not what I asked."

She sighed. "Occasionally I will catch him looking at me like that, but I think I misread him. Why would he think such things of me? No one else ever has."

Rivka raised her eyebrows. "Perhaps he is different." Ziva's lips tugged upwards in a sad smile.

"He _is_ different," she confirmed. "But none of this matters. You know my mission. Sentiment has no place."

"That is your father speaking," Rivka informed her, cocking her eyebrows. "There is always sentiment. When you were killing Hamas after Talia's death, that was fueled by anger, by _sentiment._ This is no different."

"And what sentiment do you assume I harbor for him?"

Her mother shrugged. "You tell me, Ziva." Ziva responded with a questioning look, leading Rivka to guide her daughter's chin to look at the couple in the bed. "What do you feel when you see him? Be honest."

She did not dare say no to her mother, not here.

Tony was running his hands down the woman's arms as he kissed her mouth. Even from afar she could see how tenderly he touched her. She shivered.

"Desire."

Rivka rolled her eyes. "It is more than that and you know it."

She took a moment to think, rolling her thoughts around in her head as she tried to condense some of them into singular words. Finally she produced one.

"Confusion." Her mother's curious gaze bid her to continue. "I have not known men to be so… patient, or attentive…or gentle. Least of all to me." She sighed, shaking her head. "He makes me forget who I am, what I have done."

"You have feelings for him."

Ziva simply took a deep breath. "He is a good man—a very good man. He deserves the best in life, I know that much."

Seemingly satisfied, her mother nodded. "I want you to remember that when you watch what is about to happen," she said, inclining her head to the couple in the bed.

The words settled heavily on Ziva's chest as she registered their meaning. "Momma, what are you talking about?" she asked, trying desperately to remain calm as she looked from Tony to her mother and then back again.

A flash of light at the woman's hip reached Ziva's wide eyes and she screamed.

"_No!_"

The woman clutched the blade tight in her grasp as Tony continued to kiss his way across her jawline, oblivious.

"Tony, _run!_ She'll kill you! _Tony!_" She was struggling now, trying desperately to run to him, to rip that knife from the woman's hands. But something was holding her back. Her dread compounded when she realized it was her own mother restraining her. Ziva fought, but Rivka's grip was iron tight.

"Let go of me! He's going to die!" she begged, tears swimming in her eyes. Over her mother's shoulder she could see the woman adjusting her grip on the knife. White-hot panic spread through her chest, down her legs and arms and into her fingers and toes. She pounded clenched fists against her mother's chest, refusing to give up and let this kind, deserving man be slaughtered in front of her. Her vision was swimming from the tears which spilled freely down her cheeks.

"_Tony!_" she screamed again, pleading with him to hear her. "Tony, she's go—"

Her terrified words dissolved into throaty, gargled sobs as the woman sliced the blade across Tony's throat. Ziva collapsed into her mother's arms, fists still pounding weakly against her. Her eyes were clamped shut but behind the lids she could see the spurt of red that followed as the knife tore through Tony's body. She shook.

"Ziva, stand up." Her mother was moving her then, forcing her to stand. Rivka soon stood behind her with her hands on her shoulders. Ziva's eyes fluttered open.

Up from the bed stood the murderess, clutching the knife in her hand. She was soaked in blood, the warm red liquid staining her green dress, her fingers, her hair, and the golden star-shaped pendant hanging at her neck.

The woman walked to stand directly in front of Ziva, their gazes met, and suddenly the connection was made.

Ziva looked down in horror to find herself wearing the same green dress, the same necklace, coated in the same blood that spilled out of Tony DiNozzo's heart. She felt something cold in her hand—the knife. A strangled sound rose from her throat and the knife clattered to the ground.

The killer—_her_—just stared at her with haunting, hollow eyes.

Gasping for air, Ziva whirled back around to find answers with her mother. Rivka was not there, however. All that met her was an empty white wall. She turned back and found the other woman, her other self, gone.

It was only her, standing covered in blood, the murder weapon at her feet and the still-warm corpse of her victim, Anthony DiNozzo, spread out on the bed like an offering.

.:.

Ziva woke up terrified, her heart pounding wildly as she gasped for air. The world around her was soaked in red. All she could see was an innocent man's blood flowing like a river from his neck, and even though her hands were dry she could still feel the thick liquid coating them. She sat up, feeling nauseated and dizzy as she made beeline for the bathroom.

She turned the faucet on hot and tried her best to scrub off the phantom blood. The initial panic was fading and soon she had come to her senses enough to see that her hands were clean. Shutting off the water, she managed to pick up a towel with trembling fingers.

Her reflection in the mirror was the only true comfort, despite looking altogether disheveled and terrified. The dream-woman's eyes haunted her. They were coffee-brown, just like hers, and despite the horrible atrocity that had just been committed, they were steady, clear, focused.

Empty.

Ziva recognized herself in that woman for reasons beyond the physical resemblance. She recognized what she saw in the mirror when cleaning her hands of the blood of her marks in the past. She remembered feeling so cold, devoid of emotion, almost inhuman.

She had been that woman for the past two months, but tonight she made a vow—_never again._ Her father's menacing threats once again came back to her, but she could no longer find it in herself to be more afraid of his consequences than the alternative.

Tony DiNozzo was a good man, she knew that much. He was more than just charming; he was thoughtful, the kind of person who never liked to see others down. He was kind and funny and loyal—and God, if she didn't sound like a schoolgirl with a crush…

But she was not saving him simply because of the way he made her feel. She was not saving him only because he was the first person since Tali died to make her feel like she was something more than an unlovable soldier. And she was definitely not saving him because there was a possibility she was falling for him. She had no illusions about the two of them having any sort of future together; after all, he deserved far better than her and she deserved far worse than him.

No, she was saving him because he was innocent, and to kill him was unthinkable, unforgiveable. She had had a taste of that guilt tonight, and she knew she would rather suffer the worst punishment her father could dream of than have to carry that for the rest of her life.

She stumbled back into the bedroom and collapsed back onto the bed, staring blankly at the ceiling. Unable to sleep, she stayed like that until morning when the bright sunlight filtered in through the glass balcony doors.

She would stay this last day, she decided. Tomorrow she would leave, but she needed to see him.

Just one last time.

* * *

_A/N: Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed it. If you're sad because of the lack of Tony, don't worry- I'm pretty sure the next chapter will make up for it._

_Thank you all so much for reviewing! **Athenalarissa, Prince-bishop, Roxy, mishka, babyvfan, Mecha, Tatiana, Laila Anne, VG Littlebear, .5SOS, Licaro, j09tiva, **and **eowyngoldberry- **this means you guys! Also my neverending thanks go out to Nicole and Kiera for their advice, editing, and unwavering support._

_Allison_


	7. Chapter 7

He stood in the hallway with a brown bag of Chinese takeout in one hand and a bottle of wine in the other. He wore a plaid button-down shirt tucked into his jeans, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows and the top button undone. His slightly ruffled collar matched his slightly ruffled hair and he smiled.

"Hey, Ziva," he greeted, offering the bottle and looking at her with elevator eyes that eventually settled on her own. "You look nice." She'd spent quite a few minutes in front of the mirror, trying to decide just what to wear on their casual, stay-in date that was to her a sort of farewell. Eventually she'd settled on a pair of tight, dark jeans and a mint-green blouse.

"I can say the same to you, hmm?" she said lightly, eyes exaggeratedly tracing along his collarbone, broad shoulders, down his cut torso. "Thank you for the wine. Come in," she invited, inclining her head to the apartment behind her.

"Where should I put the food?" he asked as he slipped his shoes off.

"The table is fine. Would you like to eat now?"

"I've been smelling this the whole way here, I'm starving," he admitted. She chuckled lowly and went to the small kitchen to grab plates, wine glasses, and the necessary utensils. Arms full, she carried them to the table and sat them next to the brown paper bag from which Tony was already emptying various containers. The smell hit her nose and her stomach growled.

"Hungry too, huh?" he mused.

She uncorked the wine with a _pop_ and a lopsided grin. "Famished."

"You can't get the most basic idioms right, but you use the word _famished?_" She simply rolled her eyes in response and sat down in her chair, pouring them wine and filling her glass slightly fuller than his.

She was not usually one to drown her problems in alcohol, but the fear and dread that had lodged itself overnight in her mind, her chest, her stomach, was still yet to fade. A few drinks certainly could not hurt.

She took a larger sip than she'd intended, and it burned in her throat. The anxiety smoldered.

Hoping to take her mind off of it, she dished herself a portion of food from the containers. Noodles wrapped around chopsticks then her tongue, filling her mouth with bitterness. She gulped. Out of nowhere, an image popped into her mind.

When Tali was still young, their family had gone on vacation in Italy. It was a beautiful country full of beautiful cities teeming with culture. The young artist that she was, Ziva's little sister had insisted upon museum after museum. Ziva paid little attention, but there was one painting that had drawn a crowd. Curious and nimble, she'd made her way to the front to see what it was. It was this image that she saw that night, one of thirteen men gathered around a long, white-cloaked table.

_The Last Supper_, she thought it was called.

There was something that had drawn her, a young Jew girl, to it, just like it drew all of the people she'd weaved and dodged through to see it. Some mix of curiosity, sympathy, pity, glory…

Except now she was on the other side, and the view from here was not so glorious.

"Ziva? You okay?" She blinked as she felt a gentle touch on the back of her hand.

"I am fine," she answered almost robotically, flexing her fingers. Looking back down at her plate, she found that she'd lost her appetite. The bitterness lingered on her tongue and in her throat.

He quirked an eyebrow. "You don't look fine. Something I said?" She shook her head, glancing sideways at him and reaching for the glass of wine. One corner of her mouth twitched upwards in an empty half-smile.

"I am only thinking." The blood-colored liquid slid coolly down her throat, filling her mouth with a new, numb kind of bitterness. She sipped again.

Tony's brow furrowed as he fumbled with a pair of chopsticks.

"Did something happen? In the last day and a half?" She could tell that he was trying to sound as nonchalant as possible, but his concern shone through.

"Why?"

"Something's different."

She shrugged. "Just tired, I suppose." The look on his face told her he did not buy it for a moment. Luckily, however, he dropped it and launched into a story about a time he was so tired from working a case all night that he almost fell asleep a the wheel of the van and killed his entire team. She half listened, half stewed.

It was beginning to dawn on her that she had no plan of attack. Seeing him one last time, while it had sounded good to her aching, panicked heart that just wanted to be soothed by Tony's gentle gaze, may not have been such a great idea in practice. She could not tell him the truth, that much was clear. So that left, what? Disappearing into the night? Feeding him a lie so he would not attempt to find her? It was becoming more and more obvious the extent to which her goals tonight—closure and solace—were selfish endeavors at the very least. He would gain nothing but false hope from them, and then she would disappear. He deserved better.

_At least he is breathing,_ she told herself. In theory, nothing else mattered beyond that.

That was a lie, of course, one that became extremely evident as she fully thought through the consequences of her current plan of attack. She'd missed something crucial, something that started as a nagging doubt in the back of her mind but grew into a consuming fear. The more she thought about it, the more she could not believe that she'd overlooked it.

Tomorrow, she would go back to Eli empty-handed. He would deal with her as he saw fit and in the same breath order another officer—one not quite as sympathetic as she—to finish the job.

Tony would be dead within the week.

And really, it should not have mattered. Ziva would not be the one to slit his throat, to watch the life drain from his oh-so-animated eyes. She would not have to see the look of utter betrayal, confusion, _despair…_ His blood would not stain _her_ hands, haunt _her_ for the rest of her life.

Except that it would. Because even if she were not the one to end his life, she would still feel responsible.

But, still, there was no way she could think of to stop it. Tony's death warrant had been written and signed on the dotted line by a man named Eli who liked to play God. Short of begging her father to spare this man, she knew of no way to keep Anthony DiNozzo alive.

At least not without knowing why her father wanted him dead in the first place.

"Ziva? You listening?"

She blinked. "Sorry, what?"

"I said did you want me to take your plate for you?" He was standing up, inclining his head toward the still half-full plate sitting before her. She quickly moved to her feet.

"No, no, you are the guest. Let me take care of this."

"Please," he scoffed, proceeding to take her dish anyhow. She grabbed the empty white containers and tossed them into the trashcan.

"When do the fireworks start?" she asked as she rinsed the plates off.

"Soon. Wanna move to the balcony?"

She nodded her assent and shut off the faucet, wiping her hands and following him to the living room.

"Would you like me to take out chairs?" she offered.

"I'm fine with standing."

The night was warm and breezy as they stepped out onto the balcony, and the tile was cool under her bare feet. They leaned against the railing, wine glasses in hand. His face was illuminated by the soft glow from the streetlamps below.

"Happy Independence Day, by the way," he bid. Ziva smirked and looked out into the night. Across the rooftops, she could see the tippy-top of the Washington Monument. They would have a nice view of the display.

"It is a big deal here, yes? Everything is decorated in white, blue, and red."

"Red, white, and blue," he corrected. The look she shot him was one of incredulity.

"What does it matter the order?"

He shrugged. "I don't know. It's like saying cheese 'n mac. Dad and mom. Mary, Peter, and Paul."

"You are not making any sense," she informed him, shaking her head.

"I'm making _plenty_ of sense. You're just not getting it." A breath, then, "Ziva, are you sure there's nothing wrong?"

She blinked in surprise. She'd been trying to appear more engaged since his earlier inquiry—apparently she had not fooled him. "There is nothing wrong, Tony."

"See, you say that," he paused to take a sip of the wine, "but you don't mean it. I catch killers for a living; it's my job to know when people are lying, and I'm pretty good at it."

She cocked an eyebrow. "Oh, are you now?"

"You're changing the subject."

"_You _are being nosey." She turned to him. "Maybe it is not any of your business."

"And _maybe_ I'm just concerned for you," he fired back. She swallowed, looking away. He clearly was not going to drop this. She had to feed him _something._

"My father called yesterday," she admitted. Why she felt the need to form a lie that was so close to such a dangerous truth was beyond her. She was playing with fire.

"Oh yeah? How'd that go?" He appeared interested, and she knew she'd have to elaborate.

She sighed. "He and I have… different expectations, I suppose you could say." And what a glorious oversimplification that was.

"About your life?"

"Essentially," she offered. "He wants me to be a certain thing, and I… am not so sure."

He frowned. "So whose idea was it for you to come here? For the internship I mean."

She licked her lips, leaning against the railing and looking back out across the rooftops. "His. I didn't really want to do this—political science, I mean. After my sister died…" she trailed off, not sure why she was divulging so much. "After she died I did not know what I wanted to do. In hindsight, I think he took advantage of that to get me to do what he wanted me to do."

"So politics is the family business?"

She smirked humorlessly. "You could say that, yes."

He sipped again. "So what do _you_ want to do, then?"

She blinked. "What?"

"What do you want to do? What do you _like?_" She was not used to being asked that question, and she had to think for a moment.

"I have… I have always liked dance. But as a career, I never considered it."

"Why not?"

Her index finger tapped the neck of the glass, and she watched mesmerized as ripples formed and disappeared. "It was never in the plan for me, I suppose."

"Your plan? Or your father's?"

Her eyes burned and she wondered how such simple, obvious questions could affect her so. "My father… he is not a man to say no to."

"Don't you have a choice?"

Her face was set. "I do not think I have ever had a choice."

It was a lie, of course. There was always a choice. But the alternative of bending to his will was facing his wrath, and with it awaiting her tomorrow it was obvious why she had never gone against him before. She took a deep breath and the fire of fear in her chest flared along with the expansion of her lungs.

"I'm sorry, Ziva." He sounded genuinely empathetic toward her; and not pitying, there was a difference. "If it makes you feel any better, I know what you mean. My father's not exactly great to deal with, either."

She welcomed the shift of topic. "What is your father like?"

Tony scoffed. "You'd have to meet him." Upon seeing her continued look of curiosity, he continued. "He's charming, I guess. A real smooth-talker. But he doesn't exactly… walk a straight line."

"So he wanted you to follow in his footsteps and then you became a cop? I can see how that would irritate him."

Tony shrugged. "It's more that he thinks I can do better with my life."

"Better than finding justice for the grieving and putting criminals behind bars?" Minus the _behind bars _part, that was in essence her father's mission. It was interesting how different but similar the two men were.

Tony seemed to think for a minute. "My father measures success in wealth and connections. He sees a lifetime of rubbing noses with the elite in order to further his own financial interests as fulfilling. And trust me, he doesn't exactly have any morals to go along with it." He shook his head. "We're very different people."

Her ears perked up at this, shoulders stiffening. "No moral code? Surely that makes him a lot of enemies?" Was it possible that in this eleventh hour conversation she had stumbled upon the detail that could save his life?

Tony smirked sardonically. "You have no idea."

"Enlighten me." She had not intended to sound quite so pushy.

"I shouldn't tell you." He shook his head, eyes glancing at her chest. She looked down to find her golden Star of David pendant gleaming in the moonlight. Her shoulders tensed.

"Why not?"

Tony shook his head. "It's pretty bad, Ziva. He's gotten tangled up in some really messy stuff. With people you do _not_ want to tangle with."

Her stomach was in knots. "Does that have anything to do with why you are oogling my necklace?"

"It's ogling, and…" he sighed. "And I suppose by now you've figured it out."

"Hamas," she deadpanned. His Adam's apple bobbed.

"Winner, winner, chicken dinner." The words were dry and humorless.

"They do not mess around, Tony," she warned, eyes dark.

"You don't think I know that?" he asked, turning on her in his frustration. She did not take it personally. He shook his head and settled, leaning up with his forearms against the railing as he stared at the street below. "I've tried talking him out of it. He's not a good listener." He drained the rest of his wine in one gulp. "He's gotten threats, you know. Against his life. There are people don't like that he's dealing with…those kind of groups. And reasonably so. But Senior's making a hefty profit off of it, so what does he care?" Tony barked a dry laugh, shaking his head and putting the glass down on the small balcony table.

That had to be it. It fit far too well, far too conveniently, for this not to be her father's motive. The man was not above blackmail if preceding threats did work and, given what she knew about Eli, it was not unreasonable to think that he'd been holding Tony's life as leverage. Obviously Mr. DiNozzo had not caved, and when Eli sent Ziva to DC he was simply making good on his threat. And as terrible and immoral of a thing that was to do, she was elated. Her father did not want _Tony_ dead. Tony was merely a means to an end.

If she played her cards right, perhaps one of them could survive this.

"What do you think _could_ get him to stop? Dealing with Hamas, I mean."

Tony ran a hand through his hair and exhaled deeply. "God, Ziva, I don't know. He's a difficult guy."

Just as he finished the first firework was set off. It shot into the sky with a burst of light and color, the deafening _boom_ following shortly after. She jumped slightly, the little liquid left in her glass sloshing around. She drained it along with the next explosion and sat it next to his on the table behind them. When she leaned back up against the railing, the space between them had shrunk. She could feel the heat of his arm on hers, calling for her to slide closer, closer. A foreign longing for his touch lodged itself in her chest, neighbor to the undulating, ever-present terror.

She slipped closer to him and the desire flared, momentarily strong enough to mask the fear altogether. She shuddered, craving more, longing for a reprieve. This last night was not something that she wanted to be colored black by the thought of what she would face tomorrow.

She wanted to forget, even if only for a night, and what better way than to lose herself in him?

The light display continued in the sky, with red white and blue lights shimmering and disappearing into the smoky-black backdrop. She could feel each far-off explosion rattling in her eardrums.

"Woah, that one was cool," Tony observed. She could see the burst of colored light reflected in his eyes.

"Yes," she agreed, sounding dazed. Something stirred in her stomach, desire of a magnitude she had never really experienced before. Tony's skin hummed against hers, electric. She noticed that at some point, her mouth had fallen slightly slack. Without meaning to, she found herself imagining what his lips would taste like against hers. The fear faded into the background, encouraging her.

The grand finale began, turning the sky a mess of light and smoke and echoing explosions off of rooftops. It was bright and loud and she could taste wine and traces of gunpowder on her tongue. He shifted, the skin of his arm moving against hers, and she shivered.

"Cold?" he asked just as the last burst of light faded from the sky. She blinked, realizing he had caught her staring.

"Just the opposite," she responded, the words tumbling from her mouth. She was reminded of the day they first met, when she'd teased and flirted to accomplish the mission. That was fake—this was not.

The corner of his mouth pulled up as he met and returned her sultry stare. "Really now?" He moved slightly so that he was facing her, breaking the physical contact. The hairs on her arm stood on end and his absence only added to her longing. Without the fireworks, the night was quiet and she could hear him breathing in, out, in, out… Almost involuntary she shifted closer to him until she could feel his hot breath on her forehead. Her eyelids fluttered.

Below their waists his hand found hers and their fingers tangled. It drew them closer, closer, until her body was millimeters from his. She could feel her heartbeat in her temple.

"Kiss me." She breathed the words, each one dripping with a desperation she knew he could not fully understand. His eyes, darkened with palpable lust, bore into hers with an intensity she knew was mirrored in her own. His free hand moved up the center of her chest and slid to cup the back of her neck. She leaned into his touch, head tilting and body arching. He was so close she could nearly taste him.

And then the gap was closed, and a new kind of fireworks exploded behind her eyelids.

Their swollen lips moved in tandem, the passion building with every passing second as they continued to deepen the kiss. At her neck, his fingers became tangled in locks of curly brown hair, and at her hip the fingers of his other hand pulled free from hers so he could wrap his arm around her waist. His palm settled at the small of her back, pulling her even closer into him, and his thumb slipped under her blouse to rub circles around the dimples at the base of her spine. It elicited a moan from Ziva and a smile from Tony that she could feel against her own lips.

Despite their passion, his hands were gentle on her body. She'd expected nothing less from the man with gentle eyes and a gentle heart. But tonight she was not looking for soft circles on the small of her back or careful, calculated caresses. She was not looking for foreplay; she was looking to forget.

She was looking to be fucked.

Impatient, she backed him up against the exterior wall of her building, the brick scratching the knuckles of her hands at his hips.

"_Bed,"_ he was barely able to force out as he came up for air from their kiss. She felt rather than heard the word being formed.

"Yes," she panted back, allowing him to take control as the stumbled across the threshold and into her bedroom. She fell back onto the mattress, chest heaving as she looked up to where he was standing. His hair was notably disheveled and the top few buttons of his shirt had somehow come undone in the scuffle. A broad grin spread across his face as he undid the rest.

She did not waste time ogling his chest; she missed far too much the feel of his warm, electric skin on hers. Pulling him down onto the bed with her, she moved closer to the headboard so that her entire body lay prone on the mattress. His body mostly covered hers, his knees sandwiching hers and their ankles tangled together. Even through two pairs of jeans, she could feel him against her thigh.

His mouth descended upon her neck, kissing and teasing and sucking. She wondered idly if she would need to wear a turtleneck tomorrow when she returned to her father. At the thought, the fear burned bright even through the pleasure, and she hissed.

"_More._"

He readily complied, and soon her blouse and bra had joined his shirt on the floor. His mouth trailed from her neck down to her breasts, his red swollen lips wrapping around her pink swollen nipples. She gave a throaty moan, arching her back. His chest hair tickled her stomach.

"Pants. Now," she demanded, her breathing labored as he continued his ministrations. He chuckled and adhered, undoing the button of her jeans and slowly sliding them down her legs without moving his mouth from her breasts. She kicked them off impatiently, leaving her only in her underwear. His hands teased up and down her thighs, making her shudder in need. With every stroke his fingers got closer and closer to where she longed for them to be, and with every stroke her arousal built. From the bulge in his pants, she could see that his was building as well.

She was tempted to grab his wrist and guide his hands herself. She was tempted to roll over and trap _him_ under _her_, take his pants of and take him, to force him to be rough with her, dammit. Every man she had ever been with had done that. There had been little intermediate period between the time her clothes were shed and they did what they sought to do. It had always worked just fine for forgetting her troubles.

As Tony's thumb rubbed aching circles over her clit, she knew that this would be very different. She whimpered, head lolling back and eyelids fluttering.

And as if that wasn't enough, his index finger began to tease her with moving the soaked underwear aside. Her breath came out in little pants and he silenced her with a hungry kiss. The ever-growing bulge in his pants slid higher up her legs as he did so, and her hips bucked.

"Patience," he coaxed, drawing out and savoring every vowel. Each syllable was accompanied by a light, teasing tap to the only part of her body still covered.

At her groan of pleasure, he hooked his index fingers on the elastic band of her soaked panties and slid them in one motion to her ankles. The cool air hit her and the noise she made made her male counterpart twitch.

She fully expected him to remove his pants then. She moved to help, but he wanted no part in it. He was not done with her yet.

His teasing fingers circled her and dipped. He flicked the little bud of nerves, relishing just a bit too much in the way that simple motion could send her into a downward spiral of pleasure. Every time he put more pressure until finally his thumb was rubbing back and forth against it, the other fingers slick with her arousal as they continued to tease her core. He brought his mouth back to her nipples, letting his teeth graze against them. She was quavering under his touch, complete putty in his hands as he focused completely on bringing her pleasure. The noises that fell from her mouth were primal and unrecognizable even to her.

"Do not stop," she ground out through gritted teeth, head thrown back in pleasure. Her palms lay face down on the mattress, an attempt to brace herself. "Please, do not stop." The second time, she was not above begging.

And the pressure built and built and built, until finally everything exploded around her. For a few moments, the pleasure he brought her completely overwhelmed her senses. She could feel, hear, see nothing else. When she finally came down from her high, she was trembling and panting and euphoric. Her vision focused and she saw the sultry grin spread across Tony's face.

Recovering quickly, she decided to turn the tables. She rolled until their positions were reversed. She sat naked on top of him, straddling his waist. The metal button of his jeans teased the sensitive flesh that he had just finished bringing pleasure to. Through the denim she could feel him hard against her sex.

"Oh, I like this," he joked as she reached down to undo his jeans. The fire of lust blazed in their unwavering eyes as she pulled the material down his legs. His boxers tented as his erection sprung free. She eyed it hungrily, still not letting go of her initial vision for this night. After all, rough was all she knew when it came to this particular endeavor.

Tony must have seen this fervor in her movements, because when he reached up to tuck a wayward strand of hair behind her ear there was a demand for calm behind his eyes. His fingers traced lines up and down her jaw, across her cheekbones, around the contours of her blood-swollen lips. Gentle. Slow. Everything she had not thought she wanted from this night.

"Please…" she whispered.

He shook his head. "Let's enjoy this, hmm?"

He guided her head down toward his. She caved and their lips, tasting of each other, connected once again. Her fingers came up to knot in his messy hair.

Their bodies fell together like perfect pieces of a puzzle. Her legs tangled with his as they rolled to their sides. She left a trail of biting kisses down his neck and collarbone, his throaty moans resonating through her whole body. Letting a hand stray southwards, she nibbled on his ear.

She slipped her fingers under the elastic of his boxers and slowly ran them down his length. She pulled the last remaining article of clothing down swiftly and surely. Somehow in all of this, he ended up back on top. She found that she did not mind.

He teased her oh-so-delicately, and she couldn't help but wonder how they ended up back here again. Their bodies, slick with sweat and desire, shone in the moonlight.

"_Tony_…" she pleaded, running her hands down his toned back and ass. She did not have to say any more. In a rush of heat she felt herself opening to him. Her legs wrapped around his sinking waist and wordless pleas tumbled from her lips to his. They moved in tandem, an effortless dance of give and take, push and pull.

And while it was passionate he was still very gentle. At some point, she realized that she did not mind. This was something she had never experienced before, and when she finally reached her climax they found release together. Someone's pleasure-filled scream echoed off the walls.

Completely spent, they collapsed on top of one another, a mess of sweaty limbs, sticky sheets, and dazed, panting grins. He rolled off and lay next to her. For a while, neither said a word; they simply lay there in the pale glow of moonlight and thought about what had just happened. Surprisingly, it was Ziva who was the first to speak.

"Thank you."

He looked over, seeming surprised. "You're thanking me?"

She blinked slowly, staring up at the ceiling. "I needed that." And oh, how different it was from what she expected, but how much better it was all the same. All of those years of thinking that meaningless, empty sex performed in a rough fervor was as good as it could get…

"Glad I could be of service," he answered wryly. She could tell that he was not happy.

"That is not what I meant. I just…" she took a deep breath, still not meeting his gaze, "I have had sex many times. But that was the first time it felt like…"

"More?"

She nodded, finally turning her head to look at him. Her eyes were wide, holding more vulnerability than she'd intended. "I did not know it could be so good."

Ah, how cruel the universe was to give her this little perfect taste of a life she could never, _would _never, have. But yet at the same time how fitting, as it reminded her just how worthy this man was of her protection. It reinforced in her mind that she had made the right decision.

"You're not too bad yourself," he joked, but behind it she could see that the seriousness of the situation did not escape him. "Too bad we both have to work tomorrow, or we could go another round."

"Sleep is important, yes?"

He gave her a kind smile. "Goodnight, Ziva," he bid, leaning over to press a chaste kiss to her lips. "You sleep tight."

"And you as well," she added in a faint voice as he rolled back on to his side. Her lips tingled. Just before she drifted off to sleep, she realized why it his action affected her so.

Of all the men she had been with, Tony was the first to kiss her goodnight.

* * *

_A/N: Wow. I've never written anything like this before… I am very nervous. I hope you guys liked it!_

_My eternal thanks go out to **mishka, princebishop, Mecha, liketoreadnotwrite, athenalarissa, ChEmMiE, mousie98, 1DNCIS5SOS, VG Littlebear, Roxy, j09tiva, Dina, 123sannancis, EowynGoldberry, **and** babyvfan** for the amazing reviews! And a very very special thanks to **Nicole **and **Tatiana,** who put up with my insecurity about this chapter and were willing to read quite a few drafts._

_Let me know what you think!_

_Allison_


	8. Chapter 8

The night planted something heavy in her stomach, a pit of concentrated dread she'd been fending off since the decision. She ached just below her ribcage, too, in a knotted sort of uneasiness that threw her off balance even as the dull, dense fear weighed her down. She felt all of this before she sat up, before she even opened her eyes. She felt along with it the body of a man she'd been meant to kill sleeping warmly at her side. She remembered then why she felt this way.

Ziva David was a condemned woman.

He stirred as she stirred, the sunlight pouring in through the curtains making them both squint.

"Wha' time 'zit?" he mumbled. She sat up, and looked at the red numbers through dizzied vision.

She swallowed, clearing thick sleep from her throat. "Just after six."

He huffed. "I've gotta get home and get ready for work."

"You are getting up now?"

"Ten more minutes," he groaned, burying his face back in her pillow.

"I will go get ready and get you up when I am done," she decided, swinging her legs over the side of the bed. She blinked and, as the world swayed and stomach turned, fought the sudden urge to vomit.

She would not look herself in the mirror as she brushed her teeth, pulled back her hair, put on clean clothing. As she bent over the sink and splashed her face with water, she could feel the woman in the mirror watching, judging. It was the woman of her nightmare, that blood-soaked woman that clutched a dripping knife in white knuckles. Ziva did not look, for fear of becoming her once again.

This was her decision. No matter the consequences.

It did not take her long to get ready, but she delayed slightly in waking him up. Once she left this room, she would be saying goodbye to him. This was the last time she would ever see him, and it should not have affected her, but it did. Perhaps if she knew what to say, this would have been easier, but she was as much at a loss now as she had been last night.

Did she leave without a word? Or did she end it here and now, and say whatever it took for him to forget her? Surely the second option was the more merciful, but with all she would face today it was so tempting to simply walk away and let him interpret her absence as he pleased.

She could no longer stand this room, with the mirror that took up half the wall and the woman within it who beckoned. She seized the handle and fell back out into the bedroom. And there was Tony, sitting half-naked on the side of the bed, examining the yellow piece of notepad paper clenched tightly in his hands.

"Ziva…?"

She frowned, heart flipping at the wide-eyed expression on his face. "Hmm?"

"What the _hell_ is this?" With those words he jerked the paper up for her to see, hands trembling. His eyes searched her face, begging for an explanation. She realized then what he was holding, what he had found.

She did not have to decide what to tell him, now—this eliminated all options but one. She sucked in a breath.

"Tony, listen to me—"

"Were you _following _me?!"

She took a few steps back, swaying. She shook her head, blinking wildly. "You do not understand. It is not—"

"Oh, it's not?" His voice climbed an octave. "_Monday night: left Navy Yard at 8, stayed home. Tuesday night: gym at 7. Wednesday night…_ Do I need to keep going? Or do you get the idea?"

Bile crept up in her throat, and she wanted nothing more than to run away. She floundered, lips opening and closing as she struggled for an explanation.

"It is not what you think," she tried to reason, holding her hand out, palm down.

"Then what is it, Ziva? Because I can only think of one explanation for this."

She swallowed, hard. "Tony…"

"Who are you? Who do you work for?"

She shook her head emphatically. Her jaw ached and voice wavered, almost pleading. "I cannot tell you that."

"The hell you can't! Why are you here?"

The room spun, and she swayed. She reached out to hold onto something, anything, but her grasping fingers found nothing. Pressure built in her chest, behind her eyes. Everything was spiraling. "I cannot…" It was barely a whisper.

"Are you here to kill me? Spy on me? What do you want?"

She looked up, then, eyes round and growing red. "I cannot…"

He slammed his hand down on the bedside table, and she startled. "_Tell me!_ You owe me that!"

"I ca—"

"You cannot _what, _Ziva?"

"I _cannot kill you!"_ she erupted, eyes bulging, chest bursting. "I tried to go through with it, I did, but I _cannot._"

"You expect me to believe that?" he scoffed. "An assassin that can't kill a man?"

She shook her head, mouth slack as she tried to pull in breaths. "This is different."

"Well, you know what, it doesn't matter! You lied to me, were sent to _kill_ me. Whether you were going to go through with it or not doesn't matter. You think I care that you planned to give up a payout to keep me alive? It doesn't _matter._"

_Is that what you think?_ she wanted to ask, but the world was still spinning and her lungs were convulsing and _this was not how she wanted this to happen._ The sunrise that morning brought with it this day of consequences, and with the horror of her father's judgment, her sentence, looming so close, everything seemed to suffocate her.

Her world spiraled, spiraled, spiraled.

He stood, grabbing his shirt and letting the crumpled paper falling to the floor. Her one slip up. She prayed her father would not find out she'd blown her cover—the punishment would be threefold.

Tony started making for the door, and she stumbled out of the way. She watched him retreat from the apartment, toward the door, buttoning his shirt as he went.

"I'm going to my boss," he stated, not even looking over his shoulder. "Don't be here when we get back."

The door slammed behind him, and the dull sound echoed off the bare walls. She stood for a moment, bracing herself against the dresser, letting the defeat crash over her, and the dust of this godforsaken life she's led to settle atop the rubble. She shuddered, for a few moments.

And then she got to work, gathering the few belongings she'd brought with her. Everything fit in a single duffel bag. A knife, a manila folder, a wad of money, a passport, hair and tooth brushes, and a few pairs of clothing. She left the dresses she'd bought for their dates lying atop the sheets. There was no point in taking them back with her. After all, she knew what happened to those who disobeyed her father, to those whose loyalty he questioned.

He would never trust her again, and she might as well have been handed a death sentence.

For a moment, a brief, brief moment, as she stood in the center of the empty apartment with her bag slung over her shoulder, she considered running away. It was a foolish thought, foolish to think she could ever drop off the grid with her father in such a position of power. She could run from him, but she could not _out_run him. She could change her name, cut her hair, spend her life running from city to city, country to country—he would still find her. She would rather not prolong her fate.

She sat the bag down and headed back to the bedroom, stooping to pick up the crumpled paper by the bed. She grabbed a pen from the drawer and wandered, light-headed, back to the dining table, turning the paper over and smoothing it against the wood. With trembling hands she scribbled a message, the wobbly letters belying her terror. Perhaps she was not the brave soldier she'd always pretended to be.

She saddled the duffel bag once again and left the apartment without a backwards glance. With distant, resigned eyes she rode the elevator down three floors, walked out to the side of the street, and hailed a cab to take her to the airport.

Behind her, she left only a few things to suggest she'd ever been in Washington—a few pairs of clothing, and a crumpled paper bearing three words that served as her suicide note.

_Please forgive me._

.:.

She did not go directly to Tel Aviv. Instead, she took a short flight that arrived at JFK just before ten. Perhaps she was stalling, putting off the inevitable, but she justified it by reminding herself that she had one more thing to do before she could return to Israel.

He returned to his flat in the early evening to find Ziva sitting on his leather sofa, waiting. She saw the alarm flare in his features, and he hesitated, looking toward the door.

"Who are you? How did you get in here?"

"It is a simple pin and tumbler design," she mused, looking back to her hands where she was picking her nails with her knife.

"If you want money—"

"It is not money I want, Mr. DiNozzo," she cut him off, sheathing her knife at her waist and standing to face him. "I only ask that you listen."

.:.

She landed at Ben Gurion the next evening, having spent the whole day traveling. She did not sleep on the plane, could not sleep on the plane. Every second, the flying hunk of metal brought her closer, closer to her father, to the consequences of being her mother's daughter; the consequences of having a conscience.

It was her mother she sought out first when the wheels touched the ground. The night was cool, with a salty sea breeze. It usually calmed her, brought her a sense of peace, knowing she was home. Never before had she despised it so much.

A taxi took her to her mother's house outside the city just after the sun had set. She had not been here since they laid her baby sister to rest; since the Shiva that ended in furious shouts and accusations. That evening that she ran out was the last time she had seen her mother.

Every step up the walkway made her heart beat faster, twisted her stomach into even worse knots. She wanted her mother. She wanted to collapse in her arms, to let her pet her hair as she whispered, _shh, motek, you made the right decision._ She craved affirmation and comfort. She needed someone to give her the strength she would need to face what was waiting for her at Mossad Headquarters. She needed her _ima,_ needed so desperately to hear her soothing voice say _I am proud of you._

But she knocked on the door and, after a long few minutes, it opened to reveal a young man with a fussing infant in his arms. She stood, dazed, realizing what this meant.

"Yes?"

Her mouth opened, shut, opened, shut. "I-I am sorry," she stuttered.

"You are looking for the woman who used to live here?"

She nodded wordlessly, not trusting her voice.

"We bought it from her a few months ago, way below market price. She seemed really eager to sell it."

Her voice was thin, disconnected. "Do you know where she went?"

He shook his head, and she was not surprised. "Sorry."

She turned, then, retreating back down the walkway much faster than she'd come. The night had darkened rapidly, sidewalk illuminated only by a few staggered street lamps. With each step, the weight of hopelessness settled heavier on her shoulders.

But worse than that was the knowledge that she was completely, truly, alone.

There were no cabs patrolling suburban Tel Aviv at this time of night, so she walked. Even if she had found a ride, she did not know where they would take her. She had no home, no family left but the one who would deliver her punishment. She would not burden any distant relatives with the few hours left of this last night. It would not be fair to them.

So she walked, for miles, until her legs and mind were numb, until her lungs burned and vision swam. Eventually she came across a cheap motel, and she paid in cash for one night. The tired man at the front desk showed her to a dirty room with peeling wallpaper and ratty curtains. This was how she was to spend her last night as a free woman.

As she curled up in filthy sheets, she realized that she had never been a free woman. Her father had seen to that.

Just as on the plane, she did not sleep, and not due to jet lag. There was no deafening engine or crying child, but it was what lived inside her head that rendered her an insomniac. She was still numb, still reeling from the crushing blow of being alone in this world.

Eventually the sun rose, and she rose with it.

.:.

Mossad Headquarters was already milling with people, even at six in the morning. She knew her father would be here, sitting behind his grand desk in the office of the Deputy Director. From behind that desk, Eliahu David played God.

She walked alone through the cold hallways, feeling as though everyone were staring. Her feet found the familiar path to the fourth-floor office. She stood erect, shoulders squared, eyes empty. Her father's receptionist looked up from a file.

"He's been waiting for you," the woman said, pity in her eyes. Ziva did not waver. She simply nodded and grabbed the knob. She twisted, pushed, and came face to face with her judge. Her stomach was in her throat.

"Abba."

Slowly, every movement measured, he closed the file on his desk, slipped the glasses from his eyes, and looked up.

She had never before seen such fury in his eyes. Somehow, he already knew. She braced herself, grounding her feet on the floor so as to not stagger backwards. She braced, and waited.

Slowly, measuredly, he stood, circling around to the front of the desk. The pit of dread lodged in her stomach dissolved into her bloodstream, sending liquid fear into every limb. It took all she had to stay rooted where she was. He was a giant of a man—not in body, but in presence—and he held her life in the palm of his hands.

"What do you have to say for yourself?" His low voice was charged with quiet rage.

She stood there, straight-backed, staring her empty eyes straight into his. Silent.

"Nothing? Nothing at all? After you disobey me, fraternize with the enemy, jeopardize Mossad, _blow your cover?_"

She sucked in a small breath. "How did you know about that?" He snarled, smacking his hand against the desk so loudly and suddenly that she flinched.

"You are really that foolish? I have eyes and ears _everywhere,_ Ziva, including within NCIS!" He loomed over her, and she felt so small. "Worse than disobey a direct order, you _betrayed_ me! You betrayed Mossad, you betrayed your _country!_" He rattled it off like a laundry list of crimes, a one man jury screaming_ guilty, guilty, guilty._

She blinked. "Tony was an innocent man and you know it."

"Your job is to follow orders! It is not your place to judge who is innocent and who deserves to die, Ziva!"

"Oh, but it is _yours?_"

He drew back, nostrils flaring. Adrenaline coursed through her veins, side-by-side with the fear. She wondered if he would strike her, as he had sometimes when she was young and disobedient. For a few charged moments they stood in a stand off, as for the first time she allowed herself to confront him.

And it would have felt good, if she hadn't known what was coming.

He reached out and grabbed the folder he'd been reading before she walked in. He held it out to her coldly, and returned to sit in his cushioned leather chair.

"You leave tonight. Hadar will be your Control Officer. Read up on the details and report at 1900."

She took a peak inside the folder, and a name and picture jumped out at her. She blanched, the color draining from her cheeks.

"And my team?" she asked. His face was stony, mouth a straight line.

"You will not have a team."

"Abba, this man is one of the highest in Hamas's ranks, I cannot simply _seduce _him—"

His sharp voice cut clear through her words. "You are in no position to argue with me, Ziva. You will do this mission, and you will do it alone. You _will_ prove your loyalty to me, and to Israel." He placed the bifocals back on the bridge of his nose. "Goodbye."

She left his office, moving like a zombie through the halls. His last words still echoed in her head with a dull finality. She knew in that moment she would never see him again.

She did not leave headquarters, because she had nowhere to go. Instead she found a dark corner in the basement where no one would find her—a file storage room, where years ago she'd pinned a man to a metal cabinet and let him take her, rough, dirty, quick. She'd been a different woman then, one fueled by patriotism and duty, whose mind was filled with the misguided teachings of her father. How different things were now, in the end of it all.

She sat on the floor, leaned against the wall, and began reading the details of her death sentence.

* * *

_A/N: I don't think I even have enough words to apologize at this point. Lehavot picked me up and swept me away, and I'm sorry. I didn't intend to take this long to update, and I really hope this doesn't happen again. The same goes for All Fall Down—I plan to update that not too long from now. _

_My greatest thanks to __**Dina, prince-bishop, athenalarissa, slurmina, libby, babyvfan, 123sannancis, liketoreadnotwrite, .5SOS, Roxy, Trish, tivaheartbreak15, VG littlebear, amaia, j09tiva, TheBlueDragonWolf, Tatiana, Com2meZt, jgibbs7, **__a__** guest, cornishcez, kfink77, weasleyemma, aquasm,**__ and another __**guest!**__ You guys are absolutely wonderful. And my eternal thanks, as always, to __**Nicole**__, for being the awesome writing buddy that she is :) _

_-Allison_


	9. Chapter 9

It did not matter how she'd gotten there. It did not matter that she had reported on time to be briefed, that she'd been issued two weapons, that she'd been put on a military transport vehicle to Ramallah. It did not matter that her mission was one of tactical assault on a well-guarded underground compound, a far cry from her usual methods of seduction in dim-lit bars, nor did it matter that it was a stealth mission fit for a professional unit of operatives, instead carried out by a single woman whose only backup was the extra handgun strapped to her ankle.

It did not matter, because from the moment Anthony DiNozzo's name was placed in her hand she was only ever headed _here. _Perhaps it went further back than that, beyond Tony; perhaps this had been written even before she was born, from the moment she was conceived as the first-born daughter of Eli David. After all, he was a man of orders, and in her life there was only one choice: obey or disobey. Two paths, and of her body and soul, only one could survive with each.

And she'd made her choice, even if it meant _this._

Oh, how quickly and efficiently the blade of his punishment fell. Not twenty-four hours after her father passed down the verdict she was already bound to a chair in the room in which she was to die. They would torture her first, of course. While she waited in the dark for them to return she played a guessing game of their methods. Would they first target her body or her mind? Would they rip off her fingernails, shred her skin, break her bones? What questions would they ask?

And how long until they realized she would give them no answers—until they gave her what she'd come for?

She could hear water dripping behind her and insects scurrying along the floor. It was hot and damp and dark, the perfect breeding ground for creatures she'd prefer stayed confined to nightmares. Who knew what filth lived down in this network of tunnels, besides the men who had beaten her unconscious and tied the ropes that now rubbed her wrists and ankles raw? She wondered what they would do with her body once they killed her—would they leave it here, as food for the scurrying insects; let them eat away her flesh until she was nothing but a pile of bones in a circle of dried blood? Whatever happened, she knew there would be no burial, no crowd of mourners come to tear their clothes over a coffin draped in a flag of blue and white. Her mother, wherever she was, would grieve in private over a dead daughter so far lost that not even her corpse could be found. Perhaps her brother, too, would shed a tear.

But her father would not falter, for this was his design.

When they came, they came in threes. One man to ask the questions, two to make her answer them. Their tactics were transparent. Intimidation by numbers, by size, by the knives and fists and threats they brandished before her. They circled, three birds of prey: two keen-eyed hawks to peck her apart, and one vulture to scavenge answers from the remains.

First, they tried brute force. Her interrogator watched with eyes that revealed nothing as his men turned every inch of her body black and blue.

"Who are you? What is your mission? Where is the rest of your team?"

It was the last question that struck home, a physical blow that the two men pummeling her were not responsible for. She gritted her teeth and snarled like a wounded animal. The vulture's eyes narrowed.

Her anger swelled, catalyzed by the question he'd dared to ask, and did not abide as they continued to rain blows down on her secured body. Despite the beating, despite the broken rib threatening her lung, the blood pouring from her nose and mouth, the pain radiating from where their boots and fists had so violently landed—despite all of this, she still fought back. She yanked at the ropes until her wrists and ankles were raw, scowled and snarled until her face was too deformed and lungs too weak.

They left only when a final blow to the head knocked her unconscious. When she woke, she found her left eye swollen almost shut, her eyelid glued closed by congealed blood. With the other eye she could see only that the cell was unchanged. The only light in the underground prison came from the hallway, filtering through a barred window. It could have been the middle of the day or the dead of night—down in the tunnels, time had no meaning. It marched forward, immeasurable, heading toward a single goal: the condemned woman's last breath.

The three returned again to waterboard her—one man to hold the chair steady on its hind legs, another to knot his fingers in her hair to hold the towel over her head, and the final to control the water and the questions. He alternated: drowning her, questioning her, drowning her again. Again she fought, arms against the ropes, head against the man who held it still. Skin tore from her wrists and clumps of hair from her scalp, coloring the water dripping to the floor red. Her lungs convulsed, fighting for air; broken ribs and raging woman screaming. Again and again she drowned, and again and again she did not die. Her fight and muscles weakened, but the questions continued.

After the waterboarding was electric shock. They wheeled in a car battery, taking black and red clamps and completing the circuit with her body. She became a conduit, a lightning rod, hundreds of volts seizing her muscles and rendering her immobile. Her mouth, coppery and crimson, stretched open in a silent scream. When they unclamped her and the current ceased, her body fell limp and her heart thumped threadily, irregularly. Through red-colored vision, a product of what she could only assume was a popped blood vessel in her eye, she took in the burns on her middle fingers, where they'd placed the clamps. Her head lolled, and through blood-clogged ears she managed to hear the familiar questions echo back to her.

She had no answer, even as they descended upon her with the clamps once again.

.:.

Ziva was no stranger to torture. Mossad-run simulations had trained her for what could happen if she were sloppy enough to be captured alive; they trained her to say nothing, even in the face of unimaginable horror.

_Everyone breaks,_ they'd told her, but she had been foolish enough to believe she was the exception. She was different. Stronger. She could hold out where others would shatter; fight back where others would surely give in.

It was a lie she'd told herself and _believed_ for many years, but from here in this blood-soaked chair it became painfully obvious that she had been deceived—and oh, what a fantastic and self-centered delusion it was. She could already feel herself splintering, her spirit draining through the cracks. It was only a matter of time before she ran dry, and she hoped death would come first.

But Death was outrun by three men who came to her everyday with heavy boots and car batteries and buckets of water. They appeared as silhouettes in the doorway, towering, casting her helpless form into their shadows. She knew them by their glinting eyes and predatory smiles, the way they stalked toward her slowly, allowing the fear to set in. They aimed to squash her, to force every drop of spirit from her breathing carcass; to bleed her dry of dignity.

Underground, she could not tell night from day, but from the guard changes and number of total visits from her torturers—seven—she could estimate that it had been a week since her capture. The strongest of men, she'd been taught, broke after only a few days, but the pride she took from this was smothered quickly by the dim, heavy awareness of how _close_ she was. Intuition, premonition; she was not interested in labeling it, but she knew as they appeared in the doorway for the eighth time that she would not last through this round of torture. Her body might survive, but her mind and soul were running on empty; there was too little fight left to stave off their attacks any longer.

They cut her from the chair, slicing at blood-soaked ropes and tattered skin and dumping her in a heap onto the ground. There, their boots could find purchase on parts of her body that had otherwise been spared from anything more than fists—her back, her stomach, her chest, her very core. Her ribs splintered and lungs seized and stomach heaved. She choked on her own bile.

They pried her open from the fetal position to water-board her, sitting on her legs and arms and pressing her head into the concrete to keep her still. Trapped beneath their suffocating weight, she gasped and sputtered as they repeated that familiar horror. It was a cruel joke, she noted, that her torture came in both the form of severe, prolonged dehydration and repeated drowning.

And of course, there were the questions, but she barely heard them anymore. She could not hear them over the blood pumping thunderously in her head, the choking coughs that seized her lungs, their hands and bodies that bore down everywhere upon her and muffled all sound. She was trampled, crumpled, crushed beneath them, and after a week of ceaseless torture they'd finally succeeded in wringing from her that final drop of spirit. She was still choking on the water in her lungs, and along with it she coughed up the last of her dignity. When they left, they left her dry and cracked—all fight gone. She almost did not notice the chains they slapped onto her wrists, anchoring her with heavy metal to a stake drilled into the floor.

She thought a lot of death once the room was swallowed by black once again—thought of it longingly. Now, however, she did not look upon this prospect with the straight-backed valiance she had before. There was no longer a sense of righteousness, of vague pride in dying a martyr's death. Where before she had imagined greeting the Reaper with her head held high, she now knew her death would not be so dignified. There was no honor in this—in spending her final days as a trampled shell of a being, a mess of broken bones and bloody sores curled on its side in misery. There was no glory in dying in this dark and damp rendition of hell that reeked of excrement and crawled with filth.

This was not the noble death she had imagined; in fact it was the very opposite—but she should not have been surprised.

Then after her spirit, they stole her sanity. This was, perhaps, less intentional on their part. They could not have known that she was already broken, that they'd already succeeded in crushing her will. They did not know that if she'd had anything to say she would have said it by now, nor that anything beyond a swift execution would be wasted effort.

No, they were not so astute, and so she continued on the path to complete and total destruction.

It was not their repeated, grandiose methods of torture that got to her. The part of her that was hurt by beatings and waterboarding and electric shock had been liquefied and drained from her body. Though the vultures continued to peck away at her remains, their beaks could not find purchase. Frustrated, they bit harder, sank their talons further into her skin, ripped her farther open, but she did not feel it the way she had when she was whole.

Rather, it was the constant _drip drip_ somewhere near her head, like the erratic ticking of some morbid clock counting down to her last breath; the stickiness of the blood that filled her mouth and nose as if to drown her; the tiny bugs that crawled along the damp concrete floor and onto the ruined skin of her feet. It was the way her left eye had swelled shut, eyelashes glued together by the congealed blood that ran in rivulets from the wound on her forehead, the way the biting metal chains locked around her wrists and chafed against her raw skin—the macabre jewelry of their torture. It was the way her throat burned for just one tiny drop of moisture.

_Drip. Drip. Drip._

It was the small things that drove her mad, in the end.

.:.

They came as a mirage, shimmering in the yellow light that filtered in from the hallway. Four bodies instead of three.

Mother, father, sister. Tony.

She felt their presence as if they were made of blood, bone, and sinew, not dust and damp air and dehydration-born hallucination. She felt the weight of their disappointment, their anger, their judgment, fill the room and wrap around her body like more chains to bind her to this dank floor.

She wanted to apologize, then—to all of them, for everything.

"I am sorry," she rasped, her first words coming from a week of screams and sounding as if she'd smoked twenty of her mother's cigarettes. If they had heard her, they made no gestures to suggest it. She leaned her head back against the wall—she could not look at them any longer, could not bear to continue gazing directly into their disappointment.

She felt another apology on her lips. There were so many—how does one apologize for an entire existence? For a lifetime of disappointment as a daughter, a sister, a lover? For doing it _all…_ wrong?

_I am sorry,_ she mouthed once again, praying they would hear her though she could not find the energy to speak the words out loud a second time. She hoped that this final act, the one thing she had actually done _right,_ would speak for her.

She hoped her death would be apology enough.

She drifted in and out of consciousness, her weakened and starving body unable to do much more than float. Every time she opened her one good eye she hoped to find the four gone, but she always she found them in front of the door, unmoved, unmoving, unblinking.

Always, except once, the last time she awoke before her torturers returned.

The others had drifted off to the side, standing in the shadows. Their heavy gazes were still locked on her miserable form, but one figure moved forward through the cell—around the empty, bleeding chair, across the floor, to the beloved sister huddled and chained in the corner.

_Tali,_ Ziva wanted to whisper, but she could only stare in terror of what happened next. But the young girl's expression was not like the others who stared at her with such intense judgment. She had softened, returned to who she had been in life.

Her eyes held nothing but compassion for the sister who now lay dying.

Tali knelt and reached out, laying her hand on Ziva's brow. Her touch was warm for a ghost as it swept locks of sticky hair away from the prisoner's face. Ziva sucked in a shaky breath, realizing what was surely happening.

This was _it. _This was death, and her sister had been sent to fetch her. Ziva's body quavered in the presence of such mercy.

"I am ready," she whispered, all air leaving her lungs in a single _whoosh._ For a moment, she believed it would be her last breath.

"I am not here for that," Tali spoke, crushing all hope with a feather voice. A warm, soft hand slipped itself around Ziva's, ethereal fingers smoothly wiping away caked blood. The ghost sat next to her sister, upon the same floor, against the same wall. She brought Ziva's manacled hand into her lap, holding it tightly. A small comfort. "But I will be right here until that time comes."

Ziva sucked in a rattled breath, the cool relief she'd felt moments ago replaced by something hot and heavy once she realized that this would continue. "I do not want you to see this," she croaked.

Tali only held tighter to her hand. "I will not let you face this alone."

A small comfort, but a comfort nonetheless.

.:.

They had reached the peak of their frustration. That much, at least, was evident in what she heard filtering in from the hallway. They'd begun to shout, to argue, to pace. She hoped that in their anger they would end it.

It was a mercy she apparently still did not deserve.

They still did not know she was a lost cause, and their determination boded darkly for her. Besides the occasional physical beating, their methods of torture had been clean. Such little lasting damage. Their new methods, from what she could hear, would include something far more… bloody. A few hours after Tali came to her, her torturers entered with a bullwhip.

For a moment, the three men who were her executioners stood side by side with the three who had brought her to them. Eli, Rivka, Tony—without just one of them, whether they knew it or not, she would not have come to Ramallah. And yet, she could assign no blame.

_It is what it is._

The two men, the hawks, came forward to string her up. They slung her chains over a hook near the ceiling and hoisted her until she could not feel the ground beneath her toes. One sliced her shirt while the other tore it away, and she winced as it took with it little hairs that had been glued to the cloth with dried blood.

She barely registered the pain when the Vulture uncoiled the rope and brought it down across her bare back. She was beyond that point, beyond screaming, beyond anything but moaning softly and letting her head hang. The leather sliced through her skin and drew rivers of blood that ran down her body. She felt like an animal, one butchered and hung on a hook before its slaughter.

But she was too far gone to know the pain.

Eventually, after her vision began to go black and they realized not even this was working, they unlocked the manacles at her wrists and let her crumple to the floor. Through the setting dark haze, she saw that Tali had never left and that their hands were joined again. She felt her sister's grip greater than the throbbing gashes on her back. Tali's gentle hands maneuvered her so that she lay flat on her stomach, and even then she did not let go.

She did not know if it was blood loss, dehydration, the pain, or simple exhaustion that finally brought unconsciousness upon her. She only knew that it came in a cool, familiar wave, and that she welcomed it easily.

Perhaps this time she would not wake up.

.:.

She was wrong, yet again, to hope for reprieve. When she woke, she woke to boisterous, drunken laughs echoing in the hallway and the sound of scraping as someone struggled to unlock the door. Eventually, they succeeded and she heard the hinges creak. On her stomach she could not see them, and she made no effort to lift her head. Though she could not count their numbers, she could tell from the noise that they were many. She did not care to see their faces, for she already recognized enough. There was no reason to know their faces when she knew their presence—like wild, ravenous dogs, thrown the tattered remains.

There was no question what they were here for, and she willed the blood to seep faster from her wounds. She had lost so much already that surely she was close to death?

She did not have the energy to do anything but lie still as they descended. Like beasts they fell upon her, their hands everywhere, groping and tearing. The button on her pants popped loose as they pulled the last bit of clothing from her body, stripping her until she was covered in nothing but her own blood and sweat and filth. They did not even bother to turn her over as they prepared her for their pleasure. Their collective, gleeful cackling bounced around the room and bombarded her eardrums, until she could hear nothing but them and feel nothing but them and see nothing but the pinched-tight blackness behind her eyelids. Bile crept up in her throat as she heard the first of their belt buckles rattling and a metal zipper fall.

So this was how she would die.

She'd taken so many lives in this fashion, so often used that sacred act as a tool to aid with vengeful murder, that for a moment she honestly feared that _this_ would be her penance. It was so terribly, morbidly fitting.

"_Hey!_"

A sharp, loud voice pierced through their jeering laughs and vulgar words. She cracked her only good eye and, in her hazy peripheral, noticed someone pushing their way through the pack of wild animals, pushing their way towards _her_. Every groping hand on her body froze.

"Get away from her! Can't you see she's barely even alive?!"

Slowly, hesitantly, the hands retreated. She gulped, good eye glued to pair of black boots right in front of her. That voice…

"Ay, Brother," a man slurred, "can't you see that we're just tryin' to have some _fun?"_

"Are any of you really so desperate that you'd fuck a corpse? Go up to the city and find yourselves some nice whores. You can have your fun with this one another day."

There was grumbling and whispered cursing and the retreat of boots to the door, but the only thing Ziva could think of beyond the relief was _that voice._ It was different in Arabic, lilted, but still she knew him.

She would know her brother anywhere.

Ari crouched down, low enough that if she lifted her head ever so slightly she could finally see his face. A strangled noise built in her throat and forced its way into the air—mournful, pitiful.

"Shh," he whispered, his voice as shaky as hers. "Shhh." For the second time, the warm hand of a sibling swept matted hair from her eyes. His thumb rubbed gently over her temple.

It was then that she remembered Tali, and realized that her sister had not been with her since the mob of men descended to swallow her.

"Ari…" she breathed, mouth lying ajar.

"It's okay, Ziva. Shh. It's okay." He maneuvered her then as Tali had, strong arms lifting her from the floor, a hand cupped at the back of her neck as if she were a newborn. He helped her upright until she was sitting on her knees before him. It was mere seconds before she lilted against him, her chin falling to his shoulder. For the first time, she remembered she was naked, but her relief overwhelmed the shame. With what little energy she could muster, she brought her arms around his back. Bloody, burned fingers with jagged nails clutched at his shirt, and if she hadn't been so exhausted she was sure she would have begun to sob.

"Shh," he whispered again, soothingly, his hand coming up to rub gently the back of her head. "It will all be okay."

She sucked in a rasping breath. "H-how are you here?" Her voice was as weak as her body.

"They know I'm a doctor. They've appointed me to make sure you don't die on them," he told her, his voice low in her ear. She could not bring herself to move from his arms. "They are worried about the blood loss."

She swallowed, lifting her head from his shoulder to look him in the eye. He steadied her with his hands on her shoulders. "You know what you have to do, then." Her eyes were clouded, drifting. She saw him blink.

"Ziva…"

"Please, Ari. You know you must."

Understanding dawned and he brought one hand to cup her face. "No," he asserted in a voice of stone.

"You cannot…" Her voice cracked. "You cannot leave me to them. _Please,_ Ari… I beg of you." Horror and desperation dripped from every strained syllable.

"_Ziva—"_

"You… you are my brother," she whispered. Her eyes burned, but were too dry to produce tears. "If you cared for me at all you would do this, _please._" She clutched him harder, fingers tightening on his arm. "Kill me."

"Ziva," he responded, his voice rational and even. "I'm not going to do that."

Her eyes were wild, voice shaking. "You know what they will do—"

"I'm not going to let that happen, either," he promised. "I'm getting you out of here."

Perhaps, a few days ago, when she'd still had a little fight left in her, Ari's words would have filled her with hope. Perhaps then she would have even been grateful. But now, his statement afforded her nothing but a disbelieving, choked laugh.

"I am serious, Ziva."

"You cannot do that."

"Yes I can. You're going to live."

"Ari, do you not understand by now?" she implored, head lolling to the side. "I am already dead."

For some reason, this seemed to make him angry. "You're not giving up, Ziva. You're not letting him win."

"Who? Our father?"

"He doesn't get to do this to you."

"How did you know—"

"They told me you were the only one they captured, that they think you came alone. No backup, no rescue mission. I know Eli, Ziva. This reeks of him," he sighed, shaking his head. "Now let's lay you down and stitch you back up."

She did not have the energy to fight him further, so she acquiesced to his movements as he helped her back onto her stomach. Her shirked off his jacket and laid it over her lower half, and she suddenly was reminded of her nudity.

She heard a bag unzip and the rustle of metal instruments. "So, what did you do?"

"Hmm?"

"To incur Eli's wrath."

Ziva's eyes fluttered as she felt something cold and wet hit her back. A rag. She sucked in a breath as it began to burn like fire. "I disobeyed his orders," she answered in a strained voice. "I was supposed to kill a man and I did not."

"He's always been a coward," Ari huffed.

"Does he, uh…" She paused, wincing, as he continued to sterilize her wounds. "Does he know you're here?"

"No, I haven't reported back to him since I came here a month or so ago."

"So there is no way that he meant for this…?"

Ari shook his head. "Sorry, Ziva, he's a bastard. Plain and simple."

They did not talk as he stitched her up. The needle wove thread in and out, in and out through the deepest of her wounds, and he finished by wrapping her torso in bandages. He tried to clean the rest of her open wounds, the ones brought about by particularly brutal blows. He disinfected and bandaged the electric burns on her hands and dabbed at her swollen eye, wiping at least some of the blood off. The gentle touch was foreign, but oh so welcome.

Once he had finished with her injuries, he helped her slide back into the discarded cargo pants and guided her weakened arms into his own jacket, as her shirt was torn beyond recognition. With her wounds dressed and body clothed, he could sit her up against the wall and offer her a bottle of water. The liquid coated her sandpaper mouth, and for the first time over a week she had water that was not forced into her mouth to drown her. She drank and drank and drank, feeling the cold liquid making its way down her throat and into her empty stomach, until finally Ari had to pull it away and remind her to breathe. She gulped in air as she gulped the water.

"Take these," he told her, extending his palm that held two white pills. "They're painkillers. You're going to need them if we plan to get you out of here." The pills were bitter, she noted as they got stuck in her still-dry throat. After only a few minutes, she felt the pain begin to dull. It was a slight change, but positive nonetheless. She suddenly felt very, very tired.

"Before you pass out let's get some food in your stomach," he urged, and suddenly there was a piece of bread. "It's not much, but we need to start light." She ate it all in a few bites, washing it down with copious amounts of water.

"Thank you," she whispered, laying her hand atop his. "I… I do not…"

"Shh. Close your eyes and rest. I will be back soon," he promised, putting his things back into the medical bag. "You're going to need your energy. The most I can hold them off of you is a day, but I'll make sure they don't touch you. And then we'll be out of here, okay?"

"Okay," she murmured, eyes fluttering.

He pressed his lips together and reached out to smooth her hair once again. "Sleep. You're okay now."

After he left she drifted, floating in a numbing darkness, and for the first time she did not wish for death.

* * *

_A/N: I owe you all for your incredible patience. I didn't expect this chapter to give me so much grief. Fortunately, thanks to some time away from the screen to think about this story and also the unwavering help of the lovely Tatiana, I've managed to plan this story clear through to the end. It will be about 13 or 14 chapters and an epilogue, barring complications :)_

_Thanks so much to __**girleffect, aquasm, athenalarissa, MSerrada, ChEmMiE, VG littlebear, amaia, tyraleanne, Tatiana, 123sannancis, Roxy, Debbie, DiNUTZzo,**__ and __**5 guests**__ for the fantastic reviews! You guys really keep me going. _

_Allison_


	10. Chapter 10

After her brother stitched up her body, her sister arrived to stitch up her heart. She was there, shimmering in the darkness, when Ziva awoke from the drug-induced sleep. The dead sat inches from the barely-living, legs folded and hands on knees. Tali's head tilted sideways, studying, waiting. From her spot against the wall, Ziva blinked slowly and took a measured breath—afraid, perhaps, that too deep an exhale would disturb the air, this trick of light and dust, that had brought her sister to her once again.

"You came back," Ziva whispered, swallowing around a sandpaper tongue.

"I came to say goodbye," Tali asserted in a voice as ethereal as her figure. "We did not get the chance to, before." A vague statement, open to so many interpretations—all of them true—but Ziva felt, rather than heard, the true meaning of her sister's words. A familiar pain, stabbing and aching and throbbing all at the same time, ripped anew through her body as she remembered the shrill cry of her cell phone, the momentary silence on the other end, then her mother's voice forming a sentence that had torn right through her. Ziva had spent the next months coating her hands with the blood of so many men—kill after kill in a grand scheme to numb her to this agony of loss. A mission to avenge, to distract, to forget.

And completely futile, in the end. This path had led her to so many things—disobedience, clarity, complete self-destruction—but never a lasting reprieve. Because, really, how does one forget something as beloved as a little sister? How does one move on?

"Do not leave me."

It was a simple order, a heartbreaking order, delivered in a voice stripped of all command. Tali blinked, lids hiding for only a moment the compassion that pooled in her eyes. "I have to. You know that."

Ziva gulped, steeling herself, shoving away any remnants of pride in order to allow herself to beg—"I need you."

"You have me, always."

Despite throbbing temples and gelatinous muscles, she shook her head. "It is not the same." She swallowed; her mouth still tasted of rust. "Never the same."

Once again the ghostly voice reached her. "I know. I miss you, too."

Ziva's eyes fell to her lap—to her bloody and ripped pants, her bloody and ripped wrists. She could not longer meet the gaze of an apparition. "Then stay."

An intake of breath, telling of longing and exasperation, accompanied a shimmering hand that reached, reached, and found a home atop something familiar—charred flesh, leaking blood. So different, but still the same. "Ziva, you're not dying anymore." Tali meant the words to be a comfort, but they did nothing but hover and conflict. "You're going to get your strength back, and you're going to escape. You can go back to your life."

Ziva could not stop the sardonic laugh that bubbled up her throat. "What life, Tali?" she questioned with widened eyes that only half-searched for an answer. She looked down at her slumped form, her crushed shell, and once again surveyed the damage that was, to her, irreparable. "I will live, but I will have nothing. I was never meant to survive this." _They have taken so much._

"Then start from the beginning. Rebuild from the foundation up—your _own_ life." Tali's thumb, there but not there, rubbed circles on the back of Ziva's limp hand. "There was so much you wanted to do. You had _dreams._" Tali smiled softly and added, "Wasn't there a time when you wanted to be a ballerina?"

Defeat was a heavy blanket that muffled Ziva's words. "Those days have long passed."

"Says who?" There was, again, that characteristic defiance in her sister's eyes—so hopeful. It struck Ziva that she really was no more than a child.

"This was supposed to be the end, Tali."

"It's an end, yes… just not _the_ end."

The words hung in the air, in Ziva's ears, long after the sound had disappeared. "I do not know that I have the strength to… rebuild myself, as you think I can. You have so much faith in me, Tali, but you don't see the reality…" Ziva blinked rapidly, pulling away from her sister's gaze once again. She could no longer look into eyes so full of optimism, of blind confidence. Tali looked at her and saw someone else—she saw the woman Ziva had been before her sister's passing. The young girl, even in death, had yet to truly understand the extent of Ziva's transformation. She could not yet understand what led her older sister, before so strong and _right, _to this state of moral and physical decay.

Ziva swallowed the little moisture in her mouth. "I never wanted you to see me like this."

"I can handle it, Ziva. I'm not a child."

"No, you are not." A heavy sigh, and then, as she gestured to her beaten body, her bloody cell, "But I don't just mean this." Ziva shook her head. "It is everything. All I've… become, since you left me. The things that I have done…" She choked on the last words, and fell silent. But it was enough.

"You're ashamed?"

Ziva's eyelids fell, heavy, concealing a flood of emotion she would rather her sister not see. "You would have hated me if you were still alive, Tali."

"I could never hate you," came the answer, almost to quickly. Little Tali, always so faithful, always so trusting. Ziva did not deserve it.

"I have gone down a very dark path. The things I have done…" Once again, those words almost caught in her throat and silenced her, but she pushed forward. "I am a monster for what I have done." Still, she said the words, but they were empty. She could not expect Tali to understand—never _wanted_ Tali to understand. Not truly, not fully… because she would never tell her.

She was so weak, in that respect. She could own up to her actions to Eli, to Tony, to her mother and brother… but she could not speak the truth, the ugly truth, to Tali.

_Monster, monster, monster._

"And saving Tony?"

The words, his name, caused her lungs to inflate, vacuuming in dank air with a _whoosh. _Her eyes opened, her head tilted upward, and there were her sister's eyes. Brown and shimmering and _knowing._

She knew—oh, of course she knew. Ziva had always underestimated her little sister. Of course, she had been watching; she had seen it all from _Olam Ha Ba_.

Ziva simply stared, stupefied, as Tali continued.

"Trading your own life for an innocent man's? Speaking out against Abba and his orders? Choosing the right thing, the moral thing, even if it meant _this?_" Each question, rhetorical though they were, struck Ziva like a physical blow. She shrunk, wanting to shield herself, all the while knowing her sister was right. "You mean to tell me that _that_, all of that… is the work of a monster?"

Tali's words stole Ziva's own, leaving room for nothing but shocked silence as the truth of it all set in. The truth as Tali saw it—the truth of a ghost, of an angel—soaked Ziva's mind and body and what was left of her spirit. It entered as air through her lungs, as sound waves through her ears, as a cool liquid that washed over her body and soaked into her pores.

Tali's hands were still warm as she tightened them around her sister's. "I never wanted this for you. I never wanted to be avenged, I never wanted such terrible things to occur in my name… and I never could have wanted you to be the one to carry out those deeds."

"I know," fell quietly, brokenly, from Ziva's lips. "I—"

"Shh. Let me finish, hmm?" Tali brushed a stray strand of hair form Ziva's eyes, tucking it so gently behind her ear. Ziva leaned into the touch. "None of this is your fault. I could never blame you… You were manipulated, by someone we both trusted."

"I should have known better, I should have seen—"

"Shh," Tali repeated, stroking the side of her head; so gently, always gently. "You could not have. You were mourning, Ziva, and he took advantage of that."

Jaw tightened, throat clogged, eyes burned red—but Ziva had no water to spare for tears. She could only choke back the knots forming in her chest, the mounting desire to let herself break… to fall shaking into her long-lost sister's arms.

Oh, so many truths that she had never let herself believe, until they came so easily from Tali's mouth. Innocent Tali, observant Tali, who would never tell a lie—it was her assertions, her all-seeing promises, that finally struck Ziva to the core, and unleashed the sobs that had been building since that first evening of the Shiva… since the beginning of the end.

She fell forward, spine made of jelly, and collapsed against her sister. Warm, ghostly arms wrapped back around her, hands rubbing her bandaged back and trying to still the sobs that Ziva herself could no longer control. Tali smelled like oranges and baking challah; like rain-soaked skin wrapped up in clean bed sheets.

"You got out, Ziva. You got out from under him. I am so proud of you."

And oh, how_ long_ she'd waited to hear that, and how strongly, after she found her mother gone, she believed she never would. To hear it from Tali was a gift she could not have expected or imagined... and she could feel, bit by bit, the strength return to her muscles, her resignation to death displaced by a desire to live. To build. To _keep making her proud._

Her sobs, bone wracking and desperate though they were, eventually stilled, though Tali's hand that rubbed circles on her back never did. Ziva breathed, heavily, soaking in the smell of her sister and her forgiveness—a breath of fresh air in a dark, musty cell.

And when Ziva pulled back, it was with strength that minutes before, she could not have imagined. Her spine straight—her lungs full, her eyes clear—she looked at her sister, and did not shy away.

"I do not want to say goodbye."

Tali smiled softly, sadly. "You know we must. I've done what I came to do." And though she never once stated her mission outright, it was now so obvious to Ziva—_absolution._

"Have I not lost you enough, Talileh?"

"I never left you," the ghost whispered. "You just were… blinded. Heading down the wrong path, away from me."

"But I am not blinded, anymore."

Tali nodded, a true smile on her lips and in her eyes. "And so I will always be there." And oh, the confidence such a simple sentence would give Ziva as she went forward.

"Goodbye, Tali," she whispered. "I love you."

Then there was a kiss, soft and warm and translucent, pressed to her cheek. Ziva's eyes slid shut, cherishing it. "I love you, too."

And when the words fell away and Ziva opened her eyes, little Tali was gone, leaving behind nothing but shimmering air and a newfound strength in her sister's bones.

.:.

The deadbolt slid aside with a _clang,_ allowing the wooden door to her cell to creak open. The past two weeks had taught her to fear that sound—fear the men whose silhouettes would appear in the threshold and the instruments of torture they carried.

But this time she was not afraid, because there was only the figure of one man illuminated by the dim light of the hallway. A familiar figure, a comforting figure—her brother, in the last of four alternating visits from her siblings that had been designed so carefully to save her. _Sister, brother, sister, brother._

And somehow, impossibly, they had succeeded in salvaging her strength.

Ari entered only with a medical bag slung over his shoulder. Until the door shut behind him, he maintained a professional posture—a serious, dominating demeanor that mimicked that of her interrogators. She did not like to see him that way, and was grateful for the moment the door creaked closed and her brother's shoulders fell, though she sensed in him an increased caution. He descended upon her with careful hands, worried eyes. She did not fight as he maneuvered her clothing to check her stitches and bandages. Rather, her gaze fell limply over his shoulder, and silence reigned. The only sound was her heavy, measured breaths and, still, the _drip drip drip. _

Once he had finished, Ari asked, "Are you okay?" His tentative hands framed her face and brought her gaze to, finally, meet squarely his.

"Yes," she breathed.

"It has to be tonight, Ziva, or not at all."

She nodded. "I am ready."

Ari, for his part, seemed to be taken aback by this. "You are?"

Her brow furrowed, tugging at cuts elsewhere on her face. "Does it surprise you that I want to get out of this hellhole?"

His answer was deadpan. "Twenty-four hours ago you were begging me to kill you." The words, true though they were, made her wince.

"Perhaps I changed my mind."

"You're not usually one to be easily persuaded." His eyes, eyes not of their father but of a woman Ziva never knew, studied hers, searching for clues.

"No," she admitted, electing to keep Ari wondering rather than bringing their sister's unearthly visit, a secret in some form, into this spoken realm of reality. He blinked.

"Well, we don't have much time," he reminded her. "So let's sort out how this is going to go."

And with that, he unzipped his bag and provided her with the details of their escape.

.:.

The watch in her hand struck four-am with no fanfare. She had been waiting for hours, staring at the hands as they trudged across the clock face without any sense of urgency. Nothing changed when the hour struck—the water still dripped in the corner, the door still remained shut, the light still flickered dimly in the hallway.

But it was time.

Adrenaline had been building in her veins since Ari left her with his bag, and now it climbed toward its peak. It provided her with the energy to stand up, sling the bag over her shoulder, and make her way to the door, just as it would power the rest of what was sure to be a harrowing escape.

She pushed on the cell door, which opened silently and with no resistance thanks to the magic of a jammed lock and freshly-oiled hinges. The hallway was clear of the usual guard patrol, and down the hall she could hear raucous laughter—the diversion her brother had promised, at precisely 0400. She spared no thoughts for victory as she stepped out of the cell she'd thought she'd come to die in. Her only attention was for the vague directions on her palm, telling her _left, right, straight, upstairs… _and finally through the back exit left unguarded for mere minutes during a shift change. She followed the route drawn in red marker on her skin, what would look at first glance to be more bloody disfigurement but what was, in reality, a map to her salvation. Ari did his job as she did hers, and within minutes she was breathing fresh, night air, outside of the underground compound. _Miracle of all miracles._

She ducked into a back alleyway and, from the bag Ari had left her, pulled a black, soft niqab. It fell over and disguised her form perfectly, veiling all but the lumpy, purple bruise that was her left eye. It was good enough, she deemed as she transferred a wad of cash—just enough for a bus ticket back to Tel Aviv—from the bag to her pocket. The bag then found a new home in a nearby dumpster, and she fled.

Fleeing was, of course, not so simple. The past two weeks of torture had taken a terrible toll on her body and, adrenaline or not, making her way across the city in the shadows proved a painful challenge. She was still dehydrated, still starving, still suffering from whip lashes and broken ribs and God knows how many other fractured bones. The fresh air and exhilaration of freedom was little match for her injuries and fatigue as she clawed her way through alley after alley.

Still, she thought of nothing more than her goal—_bus station, bus station, bus station. _She did not think of Ari, who would have to perform an escape of his own lest he be decapitated for his treachery. She did not think of Eli, who she could possibly run into in Tel Aviv, nor did she think of Tony, nor her mother, nor even Tali. She could concentrate only on pushing forward, on making her legs take her farther and farther from the underground cell that should have been her coffin.

And eventually, as the sun rose over Ramallah, she made it to the station. Ari's money was exchanged for a one-way ticket to her hometown, and soon she had boarded a bus…

Then, hours later, a taxi. She swept up the stairs of a place she used to call home and grabbed only her passport and credit card. Then a taxi again, which carried her to the airport, where she bought a ticket and boarded a plane bound for a city her veiled mind only half-registered, bent on _moving moving moving,_ away from Israel, away from her father, toward the only place that felt right, felt safe, felt like the _only place she could go…_

A taxi again, and then an elevator, then a door and a doorbell…

All before, finally, the shocked green eyes of her destination.

* * *

_A/N: I'd just like to thank everyone once again for your patience, it's more than I deserve. Thanks a billion to my reviewers, __**Athenalarissa, MSerrada, Mecha, Eowyngoldberry, Roxy, Debbie, ChEmMiE, j09tiva, prince-bishop, babyvfan, com2meZT, VG littlebear, **__a__** guest,**__ and thanks a TRILLION to Tatiana who always take the time to help and guide me through this. I hope you enjoyed this chapter! _


	11. Chapter 11

"_Ziva?"_

It was a shocked utterance, breathless and misshapen, and yet it struck her forcefully in every plane of being. Like a skyscraper in a hurricane she swayed, slightly, clinging to her foundation; clinging to the weight inside herself that rooted her to this floor, in this hallway, in this building in this city in this country she never should have…

She blinked and tried to inhale, pulling hot air through thick black cloth that covered her nose, her mouth. It shielded and concealed, not simply her from the world but the world from her. And as reality began to settle around her, color seeping into the brown door, the tan walls, those green eyes, she realized just how completely obscured she'd been to reality, because somehow she had gotten here and she couldn't remember couldn't think couldn't see anything but smeared images of a bus, a taxi, a plane that went up up up toward…

_Tony._

His apartment, his building, his city, his country. She'd come here without a conscious thought, without deliberation, without even considering the fall out or what it would solve and oh, _what would this solve?_

She swayed again, and this time she couldn't pull air through the fabric. There was nothing to cling to anymore. There was no foundation of composure rooting her to this spot, no adrenaline keeping her blind and upright. Instead, she could see everything, feel everything… His shocked and confused expression realized in sharp Technicolor. Around her the walls of his hallway encroached, the niqab tightened around her body and over her mouth, and her empty lungs seized. Her memory was a blur but her vision crisp, and she reeled back with the force of what she'd done.

How could she have come back here, to the man she'd intended to kill—to the man who had left her last in a flurry of anger and betrayal? She partly expected that anger to manifest in his eyes that were the focal point of her spinning world. She expected that shocked whisper of her name to be followed with words of fury, of irrevocable banishment from his doorstep. She expected what she felt she deserved for her betrayal.

But instead those green eyes blinked, and the confusion gave way not to anger but concern. Slowly, slowly, his hand reached up…

The adrenaline had pulled away and taken her quick reflexes with it. Her hand was sluggish as it came up to stop his, knotted fingers wrapping around his wrist. He paused, but there was no strength in her grip, and soon his hand was coming closer, closer, toward her face and yet she couldn't react, couldn't do anything but keep her fingers wrapped around him.

Gently, tenderly, he tugged at the cloth that concealed her mouth and nose. She swayed again, but her eyes never left his. Cool air hit her cracked lips, filled her starved lungs, stung the now-bare cuts on her cheek. She wondered if it was her fingers she felt trembling, or his.

"Ziva…" Another breathless whisper, her name falling from his lips for the second time. It hit her as hard as the first, and now, already so shaken, she felt herself begin to crumble.

The crash from her blind high moved from head to toe. The pulsing thread of adrenaline that had kept her stitched together from the door of her hell to the door of her refuge now unwove itself from her bones, and in its absence heavy exhaustion settled. The energy pulled out first from her eyelids that fluttered and drooped, then her jaw that went slack. Her neck weakened next, and her head fell forward into Tony's palm. She thought she heard him say her name again, but by that time she was too far gone. She was unraveling, from top to bottom—first her head then her shoulders then hands then her spine that curled inward…

There were hands on her, but they did not seek to harm. They supported and guided, and though everything was coming apart at pressing _down_ she knew she was moving forward, across a threshold and a hardwood floor. And then there was something beneath her, soft under her back, her head, her legs. It enveloped her fragmented body just as something large and warm enveloped her hand. There were words, somewhere, but she did not hear them, did not need to hear them—for there were other ways besides words that he could say she was safe.

And it was with that knowledge that she stopped fighting; allow herself to crumble completely and the exhaustion to win.

.:.

She did not have to open her eyes to know something was different. Her lids glowed red with natural light and her body lay comfortably between cushions and pillows and downy blankets. And it was before she opened her eyes that everything rushed back to her at once: Ari's visit, her impossible escape, a blurred period that was lost to most of her memory, and then an elevator, a hallway, arriving—

_Here._ Her eyes snapped open, and there she was. Yesterday night's panic resurged within her, and she was grateful to be lying down. She had made such a rash, careless mistake.

Something moved in her peripheral. Her neck creaked when she turned her head ever so slightly on her pillow to see the man in the kitchen, and she wondered if she couldn't wait until he turned his back and sneak out the door—rectify this before too much damage had been done. It was a nice, if foolish, thought. There were far too many flaws…

She did not notice him notice her, but moments later he was approaching her with a glass of water. She blinked, but nothing changed.

He sat on the edge of the coffee table, just looking at her. Waiting. She realized with a start he was handing her the glass. She half-expected a joke, something to lighten the mood if only slightly, for she'd come to understand that as his M.O. But he said nothing, and his silence was oppressive.

Still, she noticed as she sat up slightly and took the glass carefully from his hand, he did not appear upset. Not as she would have expected, given their departure.

The second the water touched her tongue she was unable to stop. She drank with shaky hands and when the glass was empty she wanted more, so much more, but she did not dare ask.

In the silence her breathing seemed so loud. She fidgeted.

Looking down at the glass in her hands, she noticed for the first time that she no longer wore the she was clothed in sweatpants and a T-shirt that clearly were not hers. He had changed her while she slept, and her stomach knotted though she knew it shouldn't. Only a few weeks earlier she'd given her body completely to this man, as he'd given his to her. But that night, they'd seen each other through the lens of love and lust. Everything was different, now.

"Sorry." He pierced the silence casually. "I had to. I was worried you'd passed out because of blood loss or something."

She nodded, though there was nothing to be forgiven. She would have done the same if the situation were reversed. But… _I did not want you to see that,_ she wanted to say. She didn't. She couldn't find her voice.

"More water?" he asked, inclining his head toward the glass in her hands. She swallowed and nodded, hating how pathetic this all was. She was like a mute child.

He got up and returned with more water, and she wanted to say thank you. She nodded in appreciation instead, and downed that glass faster than she had the first. The water must have woken something within her on the way down, because she had her voice again.

"Thank you," she breathed. The words came out cracked and hoarse, but it was a start. His eyes lit up, and she wondered why his anger had yet to make an appearance. Something had changed, surely.

"Ziva…"

Her name was so serious at his lips and she wanted—needed—him to continue. She prepared herself for the questions he could ask, the answers he could demand. She prepared herself for all of it except—

"Ziva, why are you here?"

She looked away from him, from his gaze and his words that were so far from the anger she still expected. His question was not demanding but almost pleading. She wanted so badly to have an answer for him, but how could she when she had no answers for herself—only smudged and colorless memories?

"I…" She still could not look at him. "I do not know." Her voice was strained from more than just weeks of screams.

She looked up, now, to find him frowning and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his bent knees. "How?"

"I do not remember."

His eyebrows stitched together. "You don't remember coming here?"

A knot settled in her stomach. "I don't… That decision…"

"Nothing? Look, you've gotta…" He ran his fingers thought his hair, taking a deep breath before his next line of questioning. "Are you in trouble, Ziva? Are you running? This is important." His voice was firm; he must have noticed her beginning to drift. "I can help you if you re—"

"No one is after me," she told him, and it was not truly a lie. There was no immediate danger, at least not yet.

He was perplexed, that much was obvious in his expression. "Then why?" She exhaled a shaky breath, and gave him the one truth she knew.

"I had nowhere else to go."

And that, he didn't question.

Silence settled again for a few moments, and sensing the mood Tony shifted to less invasive inquiries. Unfortunately for her, she did not consider these questions any better.

"I do not need a hospital," Ziva shot down the second he suggested it.

"_Ziva…_" His voice was a warning.

"I have already been… stitched up, as you say." He knew that, did he not? He had seen her body spread and bare.

"Yeah, literally. But I'm guessing that's about the extent of the medical attention you've gotten."

"I am fine. There is nothing life-threatening."

He sighed, running his fingers through his hair again. Had he always done that? She had not noticed it before. "At least humor me and let our M.E. check you out?"

"Your medical examiner makes house calls?"

"If I need him to." There are hints of familiar banter in the exchange. It's almost possible to forget, for a fraction of a second, every tragedy that had befallen them. Almost.

He made the call and greeted the man on the other end as Ducky before slipping into his bedroom. She wondered how often this Ducky gets calls from his colleagues this early on a Saturday morning. She was sure this particular situation was a first—_an assassin that had been sent to murder me just showed up delirious and injured on my doorstep. Can you come make sure she's okay?_

How much would Tony tell him, she wondered?

She heard his phone flip shut and he came back to the living room with an offer of tea.

"Jasmine, right?"

She'd managed to sit herself up. "Uh," she cleared her throat, "yes. How did you…?" He was halfway to the kitchen before he replied, his voice reaching her after bouncing off of cabinet doors.

"That first time, in the coffee shop."

She swallowed, so unsure of herself, of acted almost as if their departure had never happened—as if he'd never discovered the truth on that piece of paper and been so terribly, blindly _angry…_ When she remembered that morning, it was not through a series of mental images but through a knot in her stomach, a pressure in her chest, a lump in her throat. It had been a morning of devastation and fear and guilt that left a mark somewhere deep within her.

And yet there they were, in his apartment, discussing their first date as if it were not tainted by lies and treachery. As if she had never betrayed him.

She did not understand.

"You remember?" The flavor of her tea—such a small detail. So insignificant. Something inside her ached, for who had she ever known that would care enough to…

He shrugged, his back still to her as he filled a mug with water and popped it in the microwave. "It was pretty memorable."

She inhaled deeply. "And you just happen to have…?" She was measured, careful, unsure of the boundaries.

"I was in the store a few nights later, saw a box."

And oh, she had no _clue_ what to do with that information.

"Thank you," she expressed when he handed her the hot mug. He responded, "You're welcome," and went right back to the kitchen, surely to avoid sitting quietly with her in this elephant-ridden room. She listened to the clanking of silverware and she sipped at her tea until Doctor Ducky arrived.

He turned out to be an older Scottish man, short, with a friendly disposition. He spoke often and at length, introducing himself first as Dr. Mallard and continuing with a story of how he was so _terribly_ sorry for taking so long to get here, but _Mother was tending to the gardens and had taken it upon herself to trim the hedges with the weed whacker and was turning them into quite the unsightly mess, not to mention, Anthony, the obvious conundrum of an elderly woman with early onset symptoms of dementia waving a weed whacker around like a jousting sword…_

He hung his hat in the doorway and allowed Tony to take his medical bag. "So, this must be my patient," he greeted her, and if was surprised or horrified by the bruises littering her face and arms he showed no sign of it. "Ziva, yes?"

"Yes. It is good to meet you, Dr. Mallard," she responded politely. She wondered if he noticed how flat her voice was, how flat she felt; paper-thin, actually, as if he could see right through her.

"Please, call me Ducky, everyone else does." He spoke with a kindly smile, a twinkle in his eyes. He reminded her, vaguely, of a grandfather she'd once had, decades ago. "I assume you would prefer if we did this somewhere more private?"

"Yes," she answered, wishing she could say something else. She felt so vulnerable in the presence of such gentility.

Tony disappeared into the kitchen as Ducky helped her into his bedroom. The doctor shut and locked the door, the second action most likely for the sake of her comfort, and escorted her to the bed. She sat, unsure. She'd been in his bedroom twice before—once in reality, once in a dream. The first visit had brought her close to her ultimate decision to spare his life, and the second visit had sealed it. Sealed everything. And yet, somehow, she'd come to stand here again.

"You look like you've taken quite the beating," he observed, setting the bag next to her and unzipping it. He pulled out a stethoscope and a blood pressure cuff, and picked up the first. "May I?" he asked, gesturing to her chest. She nodded, but secretly dreaded being touched.

The metal was cold on the skin of her chest. She wondered how fast her heartbeat measured, because with his hand on her shoulder she felt it was moving at a mile a minute, and accelerating. But if he noticed this, he again said nothing.

"If you don't mind, I will give your lungs a listen now." He was gesturing to her back, and she wondered if he noticed her reluctance to agree. He moved to her side and lifted the hem of her shirt slightly and reached up to place the cold metal—

She inhaled sharply through her teeth, jolting forward. His eyebrow quirked upward. "Mind if I take a look?"

There was no use in refusing, so she raised her arms and allowed him to lift Tony's t-shirt over her head. He laid it neatly on the bed beside her and then moved behind to see what had pained her so.

"_Oh."_ It was a whisper, a low exhale, as if the air had been squeezed from him by what he saw at her back. "Oh, my dear girl, I am so sorry."

She had yet to see the damage their whips left upon her body, but by the pain in this seemingly unflappable doctor's voice she knew it was not good. "There is nothing to apologize for." It had been inevitable, had it not? That she suffer like this?

"Whose handiwork is this?" he wondered. "The stitches, I mean."

"They did not want me to die," she responded, and it was mostly true. She did not want to bring Ari into this. Something twisted suddenly in her gut, and she hoped, no _prayed,_ that he was safe somewhere, and that he had not had to pay for her life with his.

The doctor sighed. "Well, they've been done well. There is no reason for me to redo them. Once I'm done taking inventory of the rest of your injuries I will sterilize the wounds and bandage them up for you."

He moved on, poking and prodding, but doing so gently if such a thing were possible. He pressed on her broken ribs, her charred fingers, her bruised arms and stomach. He cleaned and bandaged a few burns and cuts before moving up, to feel along the line of her jaw and nose, over every place of her skull. He found two bumps, one on the side of her head and one on the lower back.

"I would prefer that we brought you in for a CAT scan," he commented as he shone a pen light in her eyes and asked her to follow his finger. "But you do not appear to be concussed, so I will not push."

He had her remove the sweatpants next, and she found that under them was a pair of Tony's boxer shorts. As Ducky rolled them up slightly and took stock of the finger-like bruises on her thighs, she winced—Tony had seen those.

Dr. Mallard's gaze was a question dripping in sympathy, and she shook her head in answer. "They did not get that far," she assured him, and she saw in his eyes that he did not believe her. Perhaps he thought she was lying out of shame, or perhaps because she knew he would require blood tests to check for infection. "It is the truth," she promised.

When he was done—when he had taken stock of her every laceration, burn, bruise, and broken bone—he cleaned the welts on her back with alcohol and bound both them and her broken ribs tightly. He helped her back into her clothes before delivering his prognosis.

"As far as I can tell, you are going to be fine," the doctor announced. "You've sustained a great deal, but nothing appears infected and as long as you take care of yourself and clean the wounds as I've instructed, they should heal perfectly. The bruises will fade eventually; it may take longer than you hope, but none of them appear deep enough to cause internal bleeding, and most are old enough now that we would know already if they'd caused that kind of damage."

She swallowed, maintaining eye contact despite her discomfort. She really was grateful. "Thank you, doctor."

"However, there_ is_ one more thing," he continued as he zipped his bag. "I am not only a doctor of the body, Ziva. And I worked for many years in war zones, dealing with precisely this kind of—"

"Doctor," she stopped him, "I am fine."

"It is not a weakness to accept help. You have gone through something terrible."

"I was trained for this."

He sighed, longingly. "Oh, my dear. Do you really think that makes a difference?"

She looked away, then.

"I do not mean that you should see me. I know many great doctors that specialize in this particular kind of trauma that I can recommend. But if you do not want something so… formal…" He laid a supporting hand gently on her shoulder. "I am always open to a conversation over tea."

Her brow furrowed. "You offer these things, yet you do not even know me."

His response was coupled with an easy, quiet smile. "My dear, a friend of Anthony's is a friend of mine."

He helped her from the bed—she was still wobbly on her feet. How could she possibly have made it miles through the dark back alleys of Ramallah? Surely it had been an adrenaline-powered miracle.

At her request, he helped her to the adjacent bathroom. She caught only a glimpse of herself in the mirror on the way out—a battered young woman covered in splotches of purple, blue, yellow, red, black. A walking corpse.

She emerged from the bathroom and heard hushed voices drifting from the living room. From behind Tony's bedroom door she listened, curious, breath heavy.

"Is this my fault, Ducky?"

"I cannot tell you that," came the accented voice, muffled through the wood. A period of silence, then:

"I don't know what to do."

"Anthony, I don't know much about this situation, but it seems to me that you've only one choice."

"And that is?"

"Take care of her."

"_How?"_

She heard Ducky sigh. "Anthony, the poor girl has been tortured. Terribly, cruelly, _systematically_ tortured. She's scared and in pain, and I am willing to bet she feels just as lost as you do."

"Duck…" She wondered if Tony was running his hand through his hair again. He seemed to do that when he was feeling particularly stressed.

"Just listen to her. Be gentle with her. Make her feel _safe._ That is all you can do."

Tony took a deep breath. "I just… I don't know what's going on. I don't know what happened to her or who she is or why she's here or what she _expects_ me to…"

"That will come," Ducky assured him. "Make her safe first, and that will come."

She chose that moment to emerge from the bedroom, growing tired of hearing them talk about her. There was a certain… frightened vulnerability in Tony's voice when he spoke of her that she preferred not to hear. It only compounded her own fear and guilt and uncertainty and…

"Thank you, Dr. Mallard," she bid, and the two men straightened, stepping apart and turning towards her.

"Oh, it is no problem at all. Please, don't hesitate to call me if you need anything. Or if you ever feel in the need for a _real_ cup of tea," he chuckled, and she wondered if Tony knew the true meaning behind what the doctor passed as a joke. Ducky picked up his medical bag and donned his hat.

"I'll see you on Monday, Anthony."

"See you then."

And with that, the kindly medical doctor disappeared out the front door, leaving her alone with a man who had nothing but unanswered questions in his eyes.

* * *

_A/N: Look, Allison updated something in a relatively timely manner (and by that I mean it wasn't more than month for once). Hope you enjoyed the chapter! Thanks so much to **athenalarissa, eowyngoldberry, Licaro, VG littlebear, **four **guests, babyvfan, tyraleanne, amaia, prince-bishop, thebluedragonwolf, Priscilla, MSerrada, Roxy, J09tiva, Debbie, girleffect, ChEmMiE, ncistivafanforever, booksdontjusttellstories,** and of course my lovely writing buddy **Tatiana** for reviewing!_


	12. Chapter 12

She wanted to follow the doctor right out the door. Down the hallway, the stairs, into a taxicab where she could watch it all pass her by from a smudged window. She would have nowhere to go, but it would be preferable, she knew, to standing here in Tony DiNozzo's apartment, under Tony DiNozzo's gaze, preparing herself for the volley of questions she would have no choice but to answer. His stance was uncertain, his eyes searching and sympathetic—far from intimidating, yet she was small and cornered. _Can't leave, can't stay._

But she owed him, so she did not move. He took a breath and she tensed and waited.

"So, my dad called a few weeks ago."

The offhanded statement hit her in the gut, knocking her gaze to the floor. She swallowed. "Uh, what did he say?"

"That a beautiful woman broke into his apartment to discuss his business transactions." He shifted his weight. "Know anything about that?"

She did not know what to say, except, "Yes." The word fizzled and died quickly between them, and his question rushed to fill the vacuum.

"Who do you work for, Ziva?" Somehow it was gentler than she had anticipated. Certainly, she was terribly familiar with this line of inquiry. Her response should have been easy, but her lips wouldn't form the word.

"I think you know the answer to that already."

"I want to hear it from you."

She barked a laugh, dry. "And what will you do, torture it out of me?"

They were sharp words. He would have reacted the same, she suspected, if she had smacked him across the face. Her stomach coiled and he blinked, rapidly. "Ziva…"

She looked up. He deserved better, so much better, and so she swallowed and sucked a breath and channeled herself into the word that formed over her tongue, through her lips… "Mossad." Two syllables—hardly worth the screams, she mused. Hardly worth the sweat on their brows as they kicked, restrained, sliced, tore. "I work for Mossad." The words tumbled from her mouth like the red-tinged water after the towel tore away, and inside she sputtered, correcting, "_Worked."_

He nodded. "They trained you, then?"

"Yes."

"Trained you to kill?"

She looked up at his empty ceiling. Searching, perhaps; evading, probably. She bristled.

"Ziva?"

Her teeth clenched, hard, and her eyes locked with his. "What do you want me to say?"

"I want to know why you let me live."

As his words echoed she found herself thinking about right—his right, to demand this from her, because it was her decision and _her consequences _and _who does he think he…_

"What _choice_ did I have?" There was fire in her throat. "You were innocent. You did not deserve what I had been…" She shook her head. "No."

She watched carefully as he processed, word by word. Something snagged. "I wasn't aware that professional assassins were so discerning."

"Oh, they are not." Morbid humor colored her tone dark. "But do not worry, Tony. I paid for my transgressions." Her spine straightened almost in demonstration, and she saw the exact moment when he realized.

"_Ziva…"_ His eyes swept up and down her body and she knew he was remembering the time when she was asleep—when he'd stripped away a blood-crusted_ niqab_ and found her penance spread before him, red and yellow and black and blue. He rolled back on his heels. _I don't want to hear this,_ his eyes shouted, _I don't want to know. _His mouth asked anyhow. "So all of this…?" A hand made a tiny gesture toward her body.

"Mossad runs on orders and obedience," she told him, and it was an easy fact to state. The rest was harder, and softer. "He made sure I was punished."

"He?"

She debated, and decided. "The director." His eyes bulged slightly.

"Your own _director_ let this happen to you?"

And oh, could she appreciate the irony. It forced a chuckle from her throat.

"What's funny?"

"Eli David is not a merciful man." A simple fact, but for what followed she must reevaluate, decide, and brace… "Least of all to his daughter." She swallowed. "I got the mission the day I returned."

She looked away as the words hit him this time. She did not want to see the horror dawn on his face, the fury in his eyes—she had more than enough to repress already. She measured his reaction only in the sharp intakes of breath, and every now and then a string of thin words.

"Your father."

"Yes."

"The director is your father."

"Yes."

For a moment, the silence was unnerving; then, just as she looked up, "God_dammit, _Ziva."

She pulled away from his voice, brow furrowing and mouth opening lamely, but he continued.

"Do you _realize_ what you're saying? How barbaric…?"

Her stomach swirled, throat burned—she'd wondered how long it would take for the anger to make its inevitable appearance. Crisped and blackened fingers curled into fists at her side. "An example had to be made."

"He is your _father!"_

"And I knew the consequences! He warned me and I should have expected nothing less—"

"Dammit, Ziva,_ stop it!_" His voice sliced through her hers and brought the air in the room to a standstill. "Stop defending him! Stop acting like it can _ever_ be justifiable for anyone let alone a _father_ to…"

"And what do you want me to say, Tony?!" she cried again, her gut churning. "That my father is a monster? That changes nothing! _What do you want me to say?"_

"Say it's not true!" he fired back. "That no one's that cold and calculated that they would send their own daughter to be…" Something inside twisted—his tongue, perhaps, or his heart—and he tripped over the words. Choked, and whispered, "Say you didn't know. That you couldn't have known."

Understanding dawned and deflated the moment, deflated their shoulders. This had never been about Eli, not really; Tony's green eyes betrayed the truth. She took a step, closer.

"You are feeling guilty."

For the first time that day, it is he that lapses to silence.

"It is not your fault, you know."

"That morning? How I reacted?" He shook his head, jaw hinged tight. "I was shit to you, Ziva."

"With what you had discovered you had every right to—"

"But you knew," he cut her off. "You knew what he'd do to you and you went anyway." Pale fingers ran through messy hair and he huffed. "You let me walk right out that door, and you knew."

"But _you_ could not have."

"I could have listened. I could've stopped for just a _second_ and given you the benefit of the doubt instead of being just another person to…"

_To what?_ she thought. _To hurt me? To turn their back on me? To leave, as my mother did?_ She pushed away the self-pity and took another step forward. A few feet away now.

"Tony, nothing you could have done would have changed anything. This is between me and my father; you just got caught up in the middle."

"Yeah, well," he shoved his hands in his pockets, "I at least could have helped you face it."

Her fingers moved on their own accord—up, to press gently against the side of his arm. He was warm beneath his shirt. "You are a good man."

And that was the problem from the start, wasn't it?

He looked down, his lips forming into a small, appreciative smile. She saw, for a moment, a little bit of the man she remembered return to his eyes. "Well, I try." It only lasted a moment before the concern returned with a question: "How does this work now, then? After your punishment's been served then he just forgets you ever existed?"

She pulled her arm back, mouth pressed to a line. "I do not think there was meant to be an 'after,' Tony."

He furrowed his brow. "Meaning what, exactly?"

"Meaning I am standing here because I got lucky."

She wished he would stop making that face, the one that allowed her to watch as the realization spread across his features, twisting them in horror. His voice was paper-thin.

"You didn't expect...?"

"To survive?" Her laugh is dark. "No."

"You knew," he breathed. "The moment you let me live, you knew that was it."

"My father may not be a good man, but he is a predictable one."

His hands ran over his clenched and stubbled jaw as her words set in. "God, _Ziva…"_

"It was fair, yes?" Her shoulders weighed heavy with those words she did not believe. Sadness lumped in her throat. "A life for a life."

He did not know what to say, but she would not have either. Finally, honesty, yet the air between them seemed little clearer. She resisted the urge to touch his arm again.

"But it doesn't matter anymore. I escaped," she reminded him. "I doubt he wants anything to do with me now."

He cleared his throat of their sullen conversation and told her, "You can stay as long as you want. Until you get back on your feet, at least." She heard in the offer that which was still unanswered—_why are you here, _a conversation to be had another time when it was not all so raw.

"Thank you," she told him, and it was not enough. In her mind she pushed back the intrusive thoughts of _and then what, and then what, when you're back on your feet?_ She had become very good at ignoring questions she could not answer.

"Of course," he waved it off. "So, how about lunch?"

And just like that, she began to relax.

.:.

A liquid diet, they decided easily. Chicken noodle soup thawed in the microwave—_Abby made it the last time I was sick—_and it smelled a bit like Aunt Nettie's matzo. Her mouth watered.

The first spoonful touched her lips, shaky and hesitant, and suddenly she was awakened to her hunger in full force. Another spoonful, and another, but it wasn't long before she was hunched over the kitchen sink, emptying what little she had into the drain. She sputtered and retched and hated it—she could not have known how little it would take. She had never been starved before.

He held her hair, and, when she was finished, handed her a towel. His eyes were sad and filled with questions he would not ask, for he'd already seen the answers when he stripped away the _niqab_ and found her bones.

"You'll get there," he promised. "You'll get there."

She wiped her mouth and swallowed bile-tasting indignity. "I know."

"Maybe if we just start slow… I'm not exactly qualified for this kind of thing, though," he reminded her, turning around to fill up a glass of water. "I know you're against it, but if we went to the hosp—"

"No."

He handed her the glass. "They could get you an IV. You need nourishment."

"We will start slow like you said, yes?" She sipped, and continued. "I do not want a hospital."

"It could really help," he pushed.

"Tony. If I go to a hospital, I will need to give my name. The cost will be covered under Mossad's insurance."

He ran his fingers through his hair, leaning back against the countertop. "And your dad will see that."

She looked down. "I do not want to give him the satisfaction." Tony seemed to understand that easily.

"Well, we always have Ducky."

"Yes."

"Want to try again?" he asked, gesturing toward the table.

"Perhaps later. I do not think it is a good idea right now."

They passed the rest of the day mostly in silence. She picked a book from his meager collection to busy her mind, while he opted for a marathon of Magnum, P.I. and, later, a baseball game. Both tried to pretend it was not uncomfortable.

She slept on the couch because she refused to take his bed, no matter how many times he offered. She would not inconvenience him any more than was necessary.

Forty-seven cars passed by the apartment building before she fell asleep. She counted the small flares of light behind the curtains with rapt attention because she did not want to let herself think. Every time she did, there was the phrase _until you get back on your feet_ and the horrible uncertainty that came with it. She did not want to consider this because she could _not_ consider it. Lying on the couch of a man she'd been sent to murder, ostracized from her past and everything she'd ever known, what was she to think about her future?

And then there was the distinct feeling of betrayal—by a subconscious that had taken her here, of all places, and still refused to tell her why. Before she fell asleep, she wondered how long she could keep this up. How many days could she stay in this refuge, ignoring the past and the future? How long could she pretend?

Not long, she knew. Not long.

.:.

Another day passed, and she was grateful the morning after when Tony got up and went to work. They had not talked about what would happen, just like they had not talked about much of anything. He woke her gently to say there was another container of soup defrosting in the sink before grabbing his keys and leaving. His cell phone number lay scribbled on a post-it note next to the landline in case she needed something, but they both knew she would not call. A spare key dangled from a hook by the door.

First, she showered. She stripped off the bandages one by one, grimacing in pain in spots where the congealed blood acted as glue, and when her body was bare she turned to the mirror to see what Tony had seen. Suddenly, achingly, she longed for her mother. Her arms folded over her chest and she turned away.

The water seared everything away, and she tried not to remember the towel over her mouth and nose and the hands around her wrists, just as she tried not to remember the clamps attached to her soaking fingers. This was water to cleanse and heal, not water to destroy and dissolve her away into nothing. She washed her hair five times with his shampoo and ran the water cold.

She was careful not to leave spots of blood on his white towels from where she had rubbed her skin raw. When she was finally dry, she spent an hour carefully rewrapping her wounds with the extra bandages Dr. Ducky had left. She remembered Ari, and wondered and hoped.

Then she changed. Another pair of sweatpants and another oversized t-shirt adorned her bony frame. In his closet she came across a plaid button-down shirt that made her remember that night, weeks ago, when they'd tasted of wine and fireworks and each other. She'd undone those buttons one by one and discarded the cloth in a pile on her floor, where it stayed until he woke up and it all came crashing down. She shivered. It had been so different, then.

There had been a few times, a few fleeting moments during those weeks when they'd known each other, when she'd found herself imagining. She could be the State Department intern from South America—the one that could look at Tony DiNozzo and see possibilities that didn't end in death one way or the other. And oh, how sweet those thoughts had been, when she forgot her misfortune of being Ziva David and imagined how it could have been.

But it was not, she reminded herself. Even now, it was not—it could not—but this was all she had left.

Then she ate. Seven spoonfuls of that same chicken noodle soup settled in her stomach and stayed, thankfully. Then she picked up her book, and read until he came home.

He opened the door carefully, walked cautiously, regarded her on the couch as if her was not sure what to expect. She could not blame him, for neither truly knew where the other stood. Her fault, she supposed.

"A good day?" she asked, needing to say _something._ Her stomach coiled at how domestic it sounded.

"A slow one," he responded, loosening his tie. "Paperwork, mostly. You?"

She did not know what to say. "I was able to keep food down."

"Hey, that's good."

"Yes."

He cleared his throat and went to go change, ending a flinch-worthy encounter. She closed her eyes and shut the book, gathering herself.

They ate dinner quietly, Ziva managing nearly a whole bowl this time. They both finished quickly so they could retire to their own activities and no longer feel the need to speak, as crippled as they were by what had yet to be said.

Hours later, the shrill cry of his phone pulled her from her book and him from his movie. They both glanced down at the coffee table and saw the name_ Gibbs_ flash across the tiny screen. He grabbed the phone and moved to the kitchen.

"Yeah, DiNozzo," he answered.

Silence for a few moments, then: "What are you talking about?"

Her book was open, but she did not read. Instead, she listened.

"Look, Boss, you don't understand. You aren't—" … "What exactly did Ducky tell you?" … "And did he happen to mention that she'd been tortured within an inch of her life? Did he?"

Her ears perked up, and a lump formed in her throat.

"A ploy, Gibbs? If you saw her you'd know this is no ploy." … "If she wanted to kill me she would've done it by now! It's not what we thought before, okay? It's complicated."

_We? Before? _Ziva's skin prickled.

"You don't know anything about it, Gibbs."_… "_How can I trust her?" he echoed. "I listened to what she had to say."_… _"Look, I know you're just looking out for me but I'm going with my gut on this one. You do that all the time—why can't I?" …"We are _not_ involving Morrow. You're going to leave her alone. She's been through hell, she doesn't need that right now."… "I don't care if it's an NCIS case and I don't care about your goddamn rule ten. This is a personal matter now."

Her mind reeled, and the book lay in her lap forgotten.

"I know what I'm doing, Gibbs. You need to trust me to handle this." … "Okay. Yeah, see you tomorrow."

She heard him flip the phone shut and take a deep, deep breath before coming around the corner.

"Sorry about that."

"That was your boss?"

"Yeah," he ran a hand over his jaw and sat down on the coffee table, turning the phone around in his palms. "Guessing you heard that?"

She nodded. "I heard enough."

"I went to him after you… Well, that morning. I assumed whatever you wanted with me had to do with NCIS, and I mean it's pretty concerning when you find out someone's been sent to—"

"Tony." She cut in, gently laying her hand atop his. "You do not need to justify yourself to me. I understand how you must have felt." She straightened, pulling away. "It is a good thing that your boss is concerned."

"You saying you're actually gonna sneak in my room at night and…?" He dragged his index finger jokingly across his throat, but Ziva did not find it funny. That dream was still all too vivid—his blood dripping from her knife, her hands. So many times, with other men, it hadn't been a dream.

"I am saying that it means he cares."

Tony's face fell, and she knew he had drawn the parallel. "Yeah, he means well. Stubborn as hell, though."

"I would be suspicious of me, too."

He shrugged. "There's a lot I know now that I didn't before. A few days ago I had no clue what to believe."

"You did not have much to go on."

"Yeah, it was really just the few things I'd actually let you say that morning and then a cryptic phone call from my dad." His brow furrowed. "If you hadn't gone to New York I'd probably be dead."

She nodded. "Yes."

"I don't know how you got him to agree to stop. I've been trying for years."

"He cares about you, Tony," she explained with a sad smile. "I just played on that a bit."

He huffed. "I just don't get it, Ziva. You got him to stop selling to Hamas. That's what your dad wanted, right? Problem solved."

She raised an eyebrow. "It was never about your father, Tony. It wasn't even about Hamas. He was testing me—how far I would go for him." She shook her head and laughed a dry laugh. "He would not even tell me why you had to die."

"Then how did you know to go to Senior?"

Her fingers and toes were cold. "I pieced it together from some things you said when… That night. It was lucky, for both of us I suppose. He would have just sent another agent, and they would not have thought twice."

It was he who reached out this time, his hands coming to envelop hers, warm and soft. "I'm glad you're away from him, Ziva. He's not a good man."

She nodded, head falling. "I did not want to be this. I never intended…" A shudder rocked her frame. "I am sorry, Tony. There is so much that I regret."

His thumb rubbed back and forth over the back of her hand. "It's not your fault. You did the best you could, and… well, it took a lot of guts."

She breathed, in and out. "I do not know what to do, Tony." Her fingers tightened beneath his as honesty flowed like blood from her lips. She wanted it to stop. "I do not even know how I got here. Or where to go next."

She remembered Tali's words, Tali's faith that she could rebuild her life from these ashes. She remembered the resolve that gripped her body as she fell shaking to her sister's arms—_keep making her proud._ And what did Tali have to be proud of in this? A woman who would sit idle in the apartment of a man she hardly knew, hiding from reality? Empty space spread pitch-black for miles around her and she sat on his couch, trapped.

"Hey," he said, moving from the coffee table to the cushion at her side. His hand ran down her arm, coaching her. "You need time. There's nothing wrong with that."

She stared blankly down at her hands, and whispered, "_I do not know what to do."_

"Let yourself recover, first. I already told here you could stay here until things—"

"As what, Tony? You give me your… your couch and your food and your clothes and in return I just_ sit here_ reading a book and hoping that something will give, that one day I will wake up and be fine! That one day I will understand why I came here, that everything will be easy between us and my life will make sense again and… and I will be who I pretended to be, during those weeks when we…" She shook her head, taking a deep breath. "That one day I will not feel so… stuck."

His hand was in her hair, smoothing back her curls, and she leaned into the touch. "You're being too hard on yourself," he reminded her. "You've been through hell and your life's turned upside down. But everything will work itself out eventually, and you'll figure it out. We'll figure it out. Okay?"

His voice smoothed over her nerves. She blinked, slowly, and whispered, "Yes." Her mind had drifted, back to the fourth of July and fireworks and the cotton sheets that wrapped around them. It was not the act she remembered but the way he'd made her feel. Safe, warm—cherished, even.

"Good," he responded with a small smile, and she felt a smile of her own tugging softly on her mouth.

And for the first time, she did not regret the moment she stumbled to his door.

* * *

_A/N: So, yeah, hi. Sorry. I didn't intend to disappear for so long, but college applications basically came up and hit me in the face and it's difficult to write fanfiction when it feels like every moment you don't spend working on college essays is somehow screwing over your future. But I'm trying to get back into it, and come January I should be back to normal! I hope you all enjoyed this chapter! We're looking at two, maybe three, more chapters and then a final epilogue. It's coming up quickly!_

_Thank you so much to **VG littlebear, prince-bishop, dinutzzo, Mecha, J09tiva, adelina-elise, athenalarissa, Roxy, babyvfan, Bluedragonwolf, MSerrada, girlwonder2005, amaia, tyraleanne, Debbie, tabbyuknowit, ChEmMiE, com2meZT, mousie98, **and a **guest** for the amazing reviews! You guys rock. And a billion and one thanks to the lovely **Tatiana,** as always :)_

_Allison_


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